I agree of course that females should be welcome and treated with respect,
This was the issue. The way PUA was being discussed made some women here feel unwelcome and disrespected.
If the site’s purpose is rationality should it matter if there is a majority of males?
Of course not. No one expects there to ever be anything but a majority of males. But the community would be better off if the ratio wasn’t as skewed as it is. Some reasons:
Gender diversity means experience diversity and neuro-diversity, these things let us catch blind spots. The fact that we are men means there will be experiences we aren’t aware of and it is helpful to have people with those experiences around to fill in the gaps. This of course goes for all kinds of socially significant diversity.
Women, on average, appear to be less confrontational and aggressive in their discussions here (I don’t know if this is learned or innate). People with such demeanors are good to have around as the rest of us appear to get our egos caught up in arguments a lot.
One ostensible goal of this site is to help spread rationality. Alienating large segments of the the potential convert pool is a bad idea.
The general consensus appears to be that Less Wrong would be better if it were larger, it speeds up our hypothesis generation capabilities and decreases the chances of us missing things. Again, alienating large segments of the potential commenter pool is a bad idea.
And don’t forget the people with green eyes and black hair, they too deserve respect.
Can we please move past this simplistic anti-political correctness attitude where we pretend deep social categories are equivalent to eye color?
What I don’t understand is why we’re having this meta-level discussion again. All these points have been made before and whatever has been said about a ban, it is quite clear that anyone can talk about PUA without negative consequences provided they do so in a respectful manner, take into account differences between women etc. Is it that important that our discussions about what women find attractive offend women?
This was the issue. The way PUA was being discussed made some women here feel unwelcome and disrespected.
Of course not. No one expects there to ever be anything but a majority of males. But the community would be better off if the ratio wasn’t as skewed as it is. Some reasons:
Gender diversity means experience diversity and neuro-diversity, these things let us catch blind spots. The fact that we are men means there will be experiences we aren’t aware of and it is helpful to have people with those experiences around to fill in the gaps. This of course goes for all kinds of socially significant diversity.
Women, on average, appear to be less confrontational and aggressive in their discussions here (I don’t know if this is learned or innate). People with such demeanors are good to have around as the rest of us appear to get our egos caught up in arguments a lot.
One ostensible goal of this site is to help spread rationality. Alienating large segments of the the potential convert pool is a bad idea.
The general consensus appears to be that Less Wrong would be better if it were larger, it speeds up our hypothesis generation capabilities and decreases the chances of us missing things. Again, alienating large segments of the potential commenter pool is a bad idea.
Can we please move past this simplistic anti-political correctness attitude where we pretend deep social categories are equivalent to eye color?
What I don’t understand is why we’re having this meta-level discussion again. All these points have been made before and whatever has been said about a ban, it is quite clear that anyone can talk about PUA without negative consequences provided they do so in a respectful manner, take into account differences between women etc. Is it that important that our discussions about what women find attractive offend women?