interiors

As part of the Damore-related article I responded and posted about , I later wrote responses to other posters in response to a NY Times article An Open Letter to James Damore by Debra Sterling . Additional responses are below: To someone criticizing, rightly, Damore's gender views... In Hofstede's cultural dimension models, the drive for status is part of the masculinity dimension, and it varies a great deal, with the Scandinavian societies on the low end, having equivalent gender expectations, as opposed to the more traditional societies like the US. Although one might find that such traits are heritable, it is obvious that culture has a large influence on social norms. Equally important, Damore does not realize that the men entering the profession have turned the industry toxic, e.g., high pressure, not that the industry was toxic and therefore drove women away, or that what he assumes is the profession is simply emblematic of life in corporate America. Several years...

I posted a comment in response to An Open Letter to James Damore by Debra Sterling , below: It doesn't get mentioned, but some of the same stereotypes that Damore claims make women ill-suited for technology, e.g., extroversion and emotional management, are the same traits that in some studies have been shown to make teams more productive. The concern about managing relationships, regardless of gender, has been shown to correlate with more effective team leaders. Extroversion in programmers has also been shown to correlate with team productivity. I'm sure there are findings that might contradict the above, but Damore seems to have a very narrow view of what makes one effective. Leadership, or at least getting to the top, in Damore's view, and in traditional masculine societies, might require a desire for dominance and a penchant for combativeness, but ideal styles of leadership typically require driving consensus, presenting a vision, social cohesion and charisma, obvious...

An excellent, incredibly insightful and informative book, somewhat marred by the tedium experienced in the authors' rehashing the ideas of organizations working for change. For most of this book, the writers masterfully tie together concepts in systems, mathematics, consciousness, the environment, society and biology, and for that, it is a brilliant read. My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision by Fritjof Capra View all my reviews

A response to Mind the Gap , a review of The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger : At one time, as an MBA student with academic leanings, I considered researching and publishing an analysis using Hofstede's cultural dimensions and economic outcomes. What I found was that economic inequality, as measured by the GINI coefficient, correlated strongly with negative social outcomes. Trying to explain the underlying social dimension in developed countries, excluding Japan because of the vast differences in culture, it seemed that masculine (gender-divided) cultures were more unequal, but the correlation was only about .3. Intuitively, it seems obvious that the children of Britain are grossly unequal and the least social-outcome positive, and although the Northern European states are more equal and more socially positive, France and its 'children', Belgium and Canada, also have better social outcomes and lower inequality than the Anglo-Saxon states.

When I started learning economics and finance I soaked up the right-wing slant of The Economist. The magazine often exposed me to material of a more intellectual and academic nature, and its writers and editors wrote about market concepts without realizing that their presented material contradicted their dogma. I later went on to B-school, as student with 720 GMAT's and a 3.9 GPA, was a student member of the International Economics Honor Society, and I 'aced' the economic and finance courses; my understanding of economics is at least as good as the educated populace. Essentially, many economic aspects decried as socialism help the modern developed countries function and function better, i.e., big government, social security, universal healthcare, progressive taxation, financial regulation, income equality (low GINI coefficient), worker involvement/reward from production. My own private research - I was interested in publishing, and one idea was the relationship between econ...