[decorator]

> But that’s because of aggressive efforts to recruit women, as well as lawsuits, in the 1980s and 1990s, to counteract the long history of discrimination (the field as 95% men in the 1960s). If people back then hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be getting the “best person” today.

Is that not a counterfactual?

> Your comment may be factually correct, but doesn't make clear how it applies to its parent.

I didn't realise it wasn't clear. Maybe I should have defined the term & pointed out exactly where it was:

Counterfactual: 'Relating to or expressing what has not happened or is not the case.'.

Then again I expected people to be able to connect the two things together.

I guess my tone was because I'd expect someone who works in corporate law to know better. Maybe I should have outlined that as well. I could have explained that I was shocked. That's what I thought the tone conveyed. Surprise: Really?

Does that not convey surprise?

I guess it could be dismissive, but dismissing what? I'm asking a question.

I'm sorry if I was dismissive to the corporate lawyer regarding his use of a counterfactual (with the presumption that I'm correct). I probably could have pointed out I thought they were wrong in a nicer way.

[rayiner]

You get off on the wrong foot assuming I’m trying to prove the counterfactual. This is a discussion of gender disparity in engineering, why would I be trying to prove what law would’ve been like if there hadn’t been measures to address gender disparity?

Rather, I used a counterfactual to restate an epidemiological inference. “City A introduced a sewer system in 1845, cholera rates went down. City B did not, and cholera rates stayed high. Had City A not introduced a sewer system, cholera rates in City A would have stayed high.” Obviously you can’t prove that last counterfactual—but that’s besides the point. It’s just another way of stating the inference that sewer systems reduce cholera.

City A is law, and City B is engineering. More so than engineering, law was strongly associated with men, because of the nexus to business, politics, and public performance. And both fields long maintained an uneven gender ratio by, e.g., hiring women to be secretaries rather than professionals. Law took explicit measures to make up for that discrimination. Engineering hasn’t, not to the same degree. We may draw inferences from the comparison.

[decorator]

You're assuming with certainty that there was a causal relationship. Given that assumption you were comfortable in proclaiming the counterfactual to be true. You "knew" it was true because you "knew" the mechanics of the world, thus could predict the counterfactual truth-value.

Did you use something like Hill's criteria for causation[0]? To establish anything? Like in epidemiology? It's how they can make such statements.

I do take your point about how one can be somewhat certain of a counterfactual. You couldn't be though; because you've got no criteria by which to judge the causality.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Hill_criteria