We can turn this into a mathematical-skill pissing contest if you like; for what it’s worth, I don’t much favour your chances. If you’re talking about means versus variances: this is only a large effect when you’re hiring from the tails of the distribution, and a lab-manager post doesn’t require really exceptional ability in any domain.
has nothing to do with a particular job
The point of my specifying the job is that it’s a job on which performance is (1) likely to be a matter of general competence in some broad sense, rather than specialized skill that, e.g., men might be much more likely to spend a long time learning for some cultural reason, and (2) sufficiently related to general intelligence that if someone holds that men are systematically better at it, it’s reasonable to guess that this indicates they think men are smarter.
the fact that they know they post rubbish
Knowing you’re posting rubbish is not the same thing as posting something you know isn’t well thought out. The comment I guess you have in mind here is not “rubbish”, and its author’s acknowledgement neither says nor means “I know I was posting rubbish”. (If we truly adopted a standard saying that every comment on LW needs to be carefully thought through and made watertight before posting, then “who should ’scape whipping?”.)
If you’re talking about means versus variances: this is only a large effect when you’re hiring from the tails of the distribution, and a lab-manager post doesn’t require really exceptional ability in any domain.
I’m not even talking about that. People who apply for a job aren’t randomly drawn from the general population. There no reason to assume that the average of the subset with applies for a job is the same as for the general population,
True enough. So, tell me: Do you think it credible that (1) there is little overall difference in the distribution of lab-managerial competence between men and women, but (2) among undergraduates applying for lab-manager positions there is a big enough difference between the competence of men and the competence of women to make it rational to rate the former 0.7 points above the latter on a 5-point scale given applications identical in every respect other than the name? (You can find the information the raters were given here; it’s fairly brief but far from content-free.)
If so, what sort of differences do you think would do this? How big would they need to be, in your judgement?
(If we truly adopted a standard saying that every comment on LW needs to be carefully thought through and made watertight before posting, then “who should ’scape whipping?”.)
Especially on politics I would expect that people post what they consider to be carefully thought out or otherwise explicitly say that they haven’t thought it through in the same post.
I accept that sometimes people think they have put careful thought into an issue but still end up wrong, but not even having the standard of careful thought before posting is bad.
not even having the standard of careful thought before posting is bad.
I too would like to see more careful thought before posting, but that isn’t the same as saying that any comment not fully thought through before posting is “rubbish”.
We can turn this into a mathematical-skill pissing contest if you like; for what it’s worth, I don’t much favour your chances. If you’re talking about means versus variances: this is only a large effect when you’re hiring from the tails of the distribution, and a lab-manager post doesn’t require really exceptional ability in any domain.
The point of my specifying the job is that it’s a job on which performance is (1) likely to be a matter of general competence in some broad sense, rather than specialized skill that, e.g., men might be much more likely to spend a long time learning for some cultural reason, and (2) sufficiently related to general intelligence that if someone holds that men are systematically better at it, it’s reasonable to guess that this indicates they think men are smarter.
Knowing you’re posting rubbish is not the same thing as posting something you know isn’t well thought out. The comment I guess you have in mind here is not “rubbish”, and its author’s acknowledgement neither says nor means “I know I was posting rubbish”. (If we truly adopted a standard saying that every comment on LW needs to be carefully thought through and made watertight before posting, then “who should ’scape whipping?”.)
I’m not even talking about that. People who apply for a job aren’t randomly drawn from the general population. There no reason to assume that the average of the subset with applies for a job is the same as for the general population,
True enough. So, tell me: Do you think it credible that (1) there is little overall difference in the distribution of lab-managerial competence between men and women, but (2) among undergraduates applying for lab-manager positions there is a big enough difference between the competence of men and the competence of women to make it rational to rate the former 0.7 points above the latter on a 5-point scale given applications identical in every respect other than the name? (You can find the information the raters were given here; it’s fairly brief but far from content-free.)
If so, what sort of differences do you think would do this? How big would they need to be, in your judgement?
[EDITED to fix a trivial typo.]
Especially on politics I would expect that people post what they consider to be carefully thought out or otherwise explicitly say that they haven’t thought it through in the same post.
I accept that sometimes people think they have put careful thought into an issue but still end up wrong, but not even having the standard of careful thought before posting is bad.
I too would like to see more careful thought before posting, but that isn’t the same as saying that any comment not fully thought through before posting is “rubbish”.