A lot of physicists grew up as socially awkward adolescents — not exactly the captain of the football team, if you know what I mean — and have found that as scientists they can suddenly be the powerful bullies in the room, and their delight in this role helps to forge a strangely macho and exclusionary culture out of what should be a joyful pursuit of the secrets of the universe.
CosmicVariance has a post on women in physics and why there are only so few of them. Above quotation not only might indicate why, it also shows why working in physics sucks. It's not only the treatment of women, physics I think is gender-indifferent in most physicist being socially retarted idiots. Men are just used to it, as we are more prone to be one ourself. So, instead of concluding that we need more women in physics, I would conclude we need more socially apt people. Which might not necessarily be women, but, as you can also read in the post (there cited as an argument of macho-idiot-phyiscists like me), women actually do look better...
2 comments:
The situation would be immensely improved if the women that we have working in physics were not, on the whole, socially inept though. Also, I think you do certain physicists some disfavour here. Some are very socially ept idiots. What we need are people who are both socially ept and non-idiotic. If you find any such grouping of people, show me where ;o)
I reckon generally, that if you were socially ept, you wouldn't need to be as smart at figuring things out for yourself as you need to be in physics. I have a feeling that "normal" people have a more community-minded outlook that precludes learning the intricacies of space-time and all that jazz. They'd rather be having sex, so to speak :o)
There is no such thing as socially apt people. I guess it is just a german urban myth... Mas mais gajas ajudava!
Post a Comment