>As an example, from their first post, they suggest that it's not legitimate to worry about this sort of problem because larger problems exist. This form of argument is not only blindly hypocritical (that is, if the arguer believed it, they would not be engaging in the subdebate but rather be working to resolve the larger problem)

Which I am. I have a somewhat popular blog in my language on the "larger problems", and am member of several political groups on those issues. I also comment on HN on larger issues, when the topic warrants it.

What strikes me as idiotic is seeing people blogging about the "horrible problem of sexism" (what's more with examples like some programming convention where some presenter has a scantily clad girl in the slides, or the "that's what she said" jokes, or some poster on some hackathon that mentioned pretty waitresses --i.e bs--), whereas the same people and blogs never seem to mention any problem of more importance.

>but intrinsically ridiculous -- it supposes that it's not legitimate to discuss any issue while "worse" problems persist.

If your house was on fire, it would be ridiculous to discuss the fading color of the fence or that you have to mow the lawn. Without priorities, discussing problems by itself is idiotic. This very notion of yours gave rise to the concept of "first world problem", I concept with which I fully agree.

>They then literally compare their own downvoting to the Salem witch trials (the irony of which is beyond belief, and further calls into question their sincerity)

I fail to see the irony. Is it because the victims of the witch trials were women, and I (according to your reading) said something against women? I thought the message from the Salem witch trials was: "do not burn/beat/abuse/downvote people about how they conduct themselves and think" ("[the first accused] was described as not living a puritan lifestyle for she wore black clothing and odd costumes which was against the puritan code").

>and additionally claim that proportion of women in tech is "not a serious issue in its manifestation or it's consequences at all"

Am I not allowed to think that? Or is it only that I'm not allowed to make that claim?

What are the serious repercussions of less women in tech? Are there also serious repercussions of less women in the myriads of jobs there are less women? Or of less men in the myriads of jobs where there are less men?

Most women are not fascinated with shiny blinking gadgets and Star Trek, so they don't tend to choose a career path with the same criteria as men. Women took the smart path and chose biology --where the future big money are--, instead of sweating it coding mongo clients in node.js for 14 hours a day to maybe win the startup lottery.

I'd be much more worried about people who WANT and CANT be in tech (like the homeless, the poor, etc), rather than people that have the option and chose not to.

You have this a-priory theory based on ideals (and not empirical evidence) that women must necessarily be equally inclined to select an IT BSc, so you have to blow things like "sexism in IT" out of proportion to justify it not being so. As if, men and women in high school applying for college already know how it is working in an IT shop or in a startup, and that it includes sexism.

>They also fall into a really standard "I'm just expressing my opinion" backtrack, which is particularly ironic given that their initial complaint was that people were expressing their opinion on this topic rather than doing something more worthwhile.

Now, my initial complaint was that people were expressing their opinion on this topic rather than EXPRESSING THEIR OPINION on something more worthwhile. But even if it was what you mention, I still fail to see the irony.

You could be right or wrong in doing so, but there's absolutely no irony in trying to get people to stop complaining about what you consider a non-issue and doing something more worthwhile instead. For, as you see it:

Complaining about non issue: no benefit to society.
Complaining about people complaining about non issue: the benefit of getting people back to real issues.

>Regardless of their viewpoint, they're not participating in reasonable intellectual discourse. We're not obligated to argue with someone who's plainly not interested in having an actual argument, and the up/down-voting is working as it should in this instance (I'm certainly not saying it works as it should in all instances, but this is pretty clear).

Actually you're just taking the easy way out and misread my arguments with prejudice. On top, it's you who are not interested in conversation. Noticed how ALL of your arguments are about my argumentation as argumentation (i.e meta) and NONE OF THEM is about my argumentation as substance? I.e you nitpick my argumentation style, but you never add a counter-claim. Probably because you already think what you believe on the matter to be some sort of immutable physical law.

That is, I gave several arguments, talked about nurture, statistical preferences for other fields, how (any) sexism in the workplace is not known to those applying for college IT, and still women are less there, etc. What have YOU counter-argued on the matter?