[extropy-chat] Harvard president criticized over comments

[Damien Broderick]

At 11:23 AM 1/19/2005 -0500, John K Clark wrote:

>>The extraordinary rarity of great male mathematicians also makes me wonder
>>if there's any point in training all those very ordinary male scientists.
>>No, hang on, there must be something wrong here.
>
>Damien, if I read you correctly you are quite certain about this matter, I'm
>not. Is it really inconceivable the innate sexual differences could have
>something to do with mathematical ability; is the idea really so stupid that
>somebody deserves to get fired for expressing it? Historically I don't think
>any female mathematician deserves to be put into the exalted category of
>"GREAT".

John, it's a matter of emphasis. If the Harvard president was speaking only 
about mathematicians, or about those who are "GREAT", the extraordinary 
rarity of great female mathematicians would be worth exploring in this way. 
I thought he was talking about the sex ratio of Harvard professors in the 
sciences. How many of those are "GREAT"? (Quite a few are highly gifted, no 
doubt. But then "GREAT" talents are probably pretty rare, even at Harvard.)

I should add that in my experience a good many very brilliant people in the 
humanities have disabled themselves quite systematically during the last 20 
or 30 years. The sheer quantity of arrant bullshit passing for thought 
among those aping French and German `thinkers' is truly dismaying. These 
people are *not* stupid; they are adroit at the jargon and the dazzling 
intellectual moves, as if they were playing some immensely complex and 
demanding game with no connection at all to the real world. It seems likely 
to me that the brainpower pissed away in this fashion could have been used 
just as effectively in mathematics.

Damien Broderick