> No, it wasn't wrong. I studied psychology myself years before the Google blowup and similar studies were in the course. The idea that there are biological differences that cause differences in interest is entirely uncontroversial and frankly also common sense. Alternative explanations for why girls don't study computer science are all absurd.
>
> But it's clear that we've reached a point where agreeing on basic scientific facts or even common sense is apparently impossible.

Defining your personal political viewpoints as “basic scientific facts” is why you're having such a hard time understanding this.

Should you want to talk about science, here would be a few places you could start:

1. What is Damore's thesis, anyway? Simply extracting a coherent theory from that essay would be good for making sure you're talking about the same thing as everyone else.

2. What data supports that position? (Peer-reviewed journals, not “frankly also common sense”)

3. How can you test that theory against the data? In particular, actual science is falsifiable and it'd be really important to find ways a speculative theory could be disproven.

For example, if I'm reading “The idea that there are biological differences that cause differences in interest is entirely uncontroversial and frankly also common sense. Alternative explanations for why girls don't study computer science are all absurd.” correctly, you're making a broad claim that differences in the current makeup of CS participation can be explained by biology.

Looking at that like a scientist rather than a fundamental would reveal a few things to test:

1. Has it always been like that?
2. Is it like that in similar fields?
3. Is it like that in other cultures?
4. What skills could explain that gap?
5. Are there reliably measured differences in those skills?
6. Can we measure a difference in performance in those skills due to biological differences as opposed to socialization and practice?

https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/content.cfm?pub_id=4... shows a big problem for a biological claim since the big drop in CS participation from the mid-80s onward is orders of magnitude too rapid to be explained by evolution, and since that trend has not been present in other demanding fields we'd need an explanation for while e.g. CS is so much more specialized than medicine, math, chemical engineering, etc.

Similarly, actual studies have shown that e.g. mathematical skills are extremely close (http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2010-22162-004) so you're left needing to demonstrate that CS is so highly dependent on specific skill performance that anyone not performing at the extreme upper bound of the distribution cannot compete. This is especially unlikely when looking at the larger software engineering field given how multidisciplinary that is.

Finally, we'd be left needing to demonstrate that these unspecified critically important skills are actually innately determined rather than the product of practice. Simply linking e.g. the ability to rotate 3D models mentally would require more work to tell you whether that was innate or simply an uneven distribution of people who'd previously practiced that skill.

> You even called it a "turgid slog of an essay", well revealing that you can't even separate the quality of writing from the ideas a piece of writing expounds.

Or, if you care about the real answer, that it's merely the latest in a long line of people jumping into a long-running debate without having done their homework and being surprised when “You're wrong and I'm right” doesn't get more respect. It's like coming into a discussion of evolutionary biology and going “Hey, have you ever thought about how this violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics?” like you're the first person who's ever had that idea.