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Everybody Loves Science!
Jimor:
--- Quote from: LTK on 21 Jul 2013, 04:21 ---
--- Quote from: Carl-E on 21 Jul 2013, 01:08 ---When mathematical ignorance is the social norm, then yes, the social environment is to blame.
--- End quote ---
Shit. It hadn't even occured to me that people might consider having a certain skill a bad thing. That's kind of depressing.
So, when the authors are saying that the women are afraid of confirming a negative stereotype, it's not the stereotype of a woman, but the stereotype of a nerd. Goddamn it, I thought we had at least some progress in moving past that stigma by now.
--- End quote ---
It's FAR more than just being seen as a nerd. The fear is that being good in math will make them literally unattractive to boys and doomed to a life of spinsterhood, and has been reinforced by a very large array of societal pressures that includes boys, other girls, media, teachers and even parents. It's one of the most insidious and intractable memes to ever hit modern society, and even when some people agree with the idea that girls are just as good or better at math as boys, they'll still council not showing off as better. Even on college campuses, hearing a woman say "Oh, I'm just not good at math" is no less common than hearing "oh, I had my period last week".
GarandMarine:
I find women who are very good at math extremely attractive. I absolutely suck at math and like it when a partner can compensate for my utter failure in certain fields.
LTK:
--- Quote from: Jimor on 21 Jul 2013, 05:00 ---It's FAR more than just being seen as a nerd. The fear is that being good in math will make them literally unattractive to boys and doomed to a life of spinsterhood, and has been reinforced by a very large array of societal pressures that includes boys, other girls, media, teachers and even parents. It's one of the most insidious and intractable memes to ever hit modern society, and even when some people agree with the idea that girls are just as good or better at math as boys, they'll still council not showing off as better. Even on college campuses, hearing a woman say "Oh, I'm just not good at math" is no less common than hearing "oh, I had my period last week".
--- End quote ---
But that doesn't even make any sense! What's so special about math? Is it hard? Is there a stigma against girls being smart, or academically competent?
Urgh. This makes me upset. I'm gonna read about black holes until I don't hate humanity any more.
Carl-E:
Actually, I was referring to the general societal stigma against mathematical understanding. If a person's illiterate, they try and hide the fact. But when someone's innumerate? They brag about it. "I never did understand any of that math stuff" is a common attitude, and parents saying "Oh, don't worry about it, I was bad at math too" just makes it socially hereditary in the worst possible way.
And, of course, it's supposed to be worse for women, the poor dears - so difficult to wrap your head around such ideas when you're a barefoot, pregnant slave to your hormones...
LTK:
--- Quote from: ChaoSera on 30 Jul 2013, 03:53 ---With our current possibilities going near speed of light is just as impossible as going faster than it, so why not assume the more practical way, seeing as both are equally impossible right now.
The way I see it, where there is actual matter, it 'displaces', for lack of a better word, the empty space that was previously there. This means that, while the empty space expands, it may push objects further apart, but it doesn't stretch them out, so distances on earth would stay the same. Of course I am no physicist, but this is how I think it works. I imagine it like balls floating in a pool of water. If you pour the water in a bigger pool it consume a wider area, but the balls stay the same size.
--- End quote ---
I considered that possibility but I've never read anything by an actual physicist that supports that view. Mass does distort the spacetime around it, which is the cause of gravitational force. I don't think it would be accurate to say that where there is mass, there can be no space - partly because atoms are at least 90% empty space - but it's entirely possible that the distortion of spacetime caused by mass is of the same type as the stretching out of spacetime caused by the expansion of the universe. Maybe they even counteract.
Also, I thought that the expansion of the universe would eventually result in all matter being pulled apart precisely because the expansion increases the size of objects along with the size of space, but when I went to confirm that on Wikipedia the article on Heat Death I couldn't find any mention of that being a factor, so I could be wrong.
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