Hey Sean! Glad you found this post as I was curious of your thoughts on it.
I finally listened to all of that Pinker/Spelke debate today. I'm curious what you think about the counter arguments made by Elizabeth Spelke such as parents who perceive male and female babies differently given tasks they objectively accomplish the same? Or, when dealing with the averages (not the exceptional CEO examples), women are perceived as less hard working or productive if, again, objectively it's not the case.
We're like fish in water trying to run experiments on how much the water impacts us. There's no clear way to fully determine the influence of nurture but we can demonstrate how it's unequal in ways which don't match objective reality, i.e. the way we treat people is actually causing harm, and we can do something about it as a species.
The real issues being discussed here aren't "Are men and women different biologically?" Both Pinker and Spelke (and anyone else, really) says "Yes, of course!" What matters here is the context and if those differences impact why women have not been treated equally as men for so long. Do those differences have much of anything to do with the discussion at hand dealing with sexism in technology and if so, how do we know it's related to nature and not nurture without committing a naturalistic fallacy?
If we know nurture plays a significant role and we know we can actually do something about that by education, shaming, social pressures, rewards, punishments, etc, etc... then we at least have a path towards a better future where women are free to do whatever they want and they will (ideally) be judged by their abilities, not their sex/gender. If we're stuck on debating the impact of physical differences such as hormones and chemicals, how can we tease apart the role of epigenetics and gene expression? How can we know how much of the physical differences we're pointing to are a result of neural plasticity after a lifetime of lived experiences within a culture that may be misogynistic?
At the same time, we should be cautious starting with physical differences and then extrapolating from them causality when, in controlled settings dealing with priming and such, we can directly show causality. Historically related to both race and sex, we've seen how starting with the argument that physical differences play a role has led to some really, really awful conclusions. Not only did they turn out to be scientifically unsound, but they caused direct harm by further changing or reinforcing the perceptions which may be much more influential in causing discrimination.
I really like Pinker and I liked his book The Blank Slate. Just as he describes himself as a feminist, I've seen you describe yourself in similar ways, wanting to empower women to be and do anything they want and most importantly to thrive within their strengths without trying to conform to a self-image put on them by society which may not fit biological reality. That's a wonderful message which I do think should be spread. Unfortunately, I think it gets hijacked a bit by some who currently profit from a disproportionate amount of power and influence over society and don't want to see the status quo change. They want to continue controlling and defining how women are perceived in order to maintain power, even if that means granting women a new sense of self-discovery and identity which is, again, still controlled in many ways by the same classic white, male stereotype power role.
Given the waters we swim in, to say men are better than women at getting CEO jobs may have very little to do with biology and more to do with those who are already in charge and get to set the rules. What if cooperation is more advantageous than competition? Would it then make sense to have more women with lower testosterone in charge of making decisions (if we follow that testosterone argument)? The point here is we haven't yet talked about what we prefer in society, the philosophy of what "good" looks like, before we've jumped to explaining the way things are using things which can remove responsibility from harmful actors.
Most people who are passionate about this discussion are more interested in figuring out what we can do to align things along how they'd like them to be (i.e. women, minorities, etc being treated based on their ability, not their gender/racial identity).
If the answer is, "Well, we're just born that way and that's how it is" there'd be no discussion to have. Since we can provable show how much our own perception changes things, it makes sense to focus on the things we can change and go from there.
Great questions, as always. I'm looking forward to responding later today when I have more time.