From this list of authors by number of quotes, I can’t distinguish this collection from a collection that is exclusive to quotes from men (and unnamed sources).
I ask to be shown a distinction, i.e. a female who was quoted seven times or more.
Or just once, really. I haven’t seen even a single quote from a female when skimming the main list.
So, I think my favorite female public rationalist is Byron Katie, who has a number of great rationality quotes, most of which boil down to this one (which is I think her only quote in the LW RQs):
When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100 percent of the time.
Nowadays many educated people treat reinforcement theory as if it were something not terribly important that they have known and understood all along. In fact most people don’t understand it, or they would not behave so badly to the people around them.
Above that is Megan McArdle, and the highest quote I saw that was probably by a woman was this one (I didn’t look in to whether or not that Ashley is female), and this is the highest one I saw I’m pretty confident was by a woman. (A number of them were attributed to internet callsigns, which are difficult to reliably map to sex.)
If you think that more female authors on the list would be an improvement, then find female rationalists who say things worth quoting, and then quote them.
Clearly, you said that to make a point. You’re not making a random observation; it’s not the equivalent of “I only found five people in the list whose names are greater than 14 letters long”. So what’s your point?
Of course the observation isn’t random. Gender imbalance is obviously more interesting than name length and the difference in curiosity needs no justification.
Let’s help chaosmage express himself a bit: “I do not recognize any names of women in this. I wonder why that is.”
Gender imbalance is obviously more interesting than name length and the difference in curiosity needs no justification.
Which interest is not obvious. Here’s a handful of possible points which could be made by that observation:
Women generate less and worse rationality quotes then men.
LW does not post rationality quotes generated by women as frequently.
LW does not upvote rationality quotes generated by women as frequently.
Someone trying to make the first point, and someone trying to make the third point, have radically different interpretations of the observed data, and the resulting conversation will be very different depending on which point you think they’re trying to make.
What’s the reason we have to browbeat him to constrain the discussion to some specific point? To me it’s obvious several points could be made and the observation could be a sufficient discussion starter.
What’s the reason we have to browbeat him to constrain the discussion to some specific point?
Particularly on political issues, a “I observed X. Discuss.” has the potential to be a trap. Each of the points I made in the grandparent post can be construed as a political attack- the first on women, the second two on the LW community- and simultaneously attacking everyone because of a lack of clarity is, generally speaking, a conversational and political mistake. It’s not obvious which issue to engage with, and engaging with the incorrect issue is dangerous.
It’s not difficult to deduce what kind of a response to the implication question is a socially acceptable one. I might also have no implication. Even if my implication was benign I wouldn’t give you the answer. I don’t want to reward coercion or biasing a conversation before it’s even started. I don’t know why people pretend to expect honest answers to such questioning.
If you expect everyone to be totally biased in the conversation then instead of picking the right soldiers for the battle I would suggest concluding that the topic is simply too political to discuss in a rational manner.
If you browbeat people for making observations on issues that might need fixing you’re limiting your options for doing any fixing.
It’s not difficult to deduce what kind of a response to the implication question is a socially acceptable one.
If you are saying that he can figure out whether lying or telling the truth about his implication is socially acceptable, sure.
The real problem is that he already had an implication, but he’s using the fact that it’s an implication to maintain plausible deniability by not coming out and saying it. Saying it may be socially unacceptable, but that’s because making the implication is also socially unacceptable.
It seems to me you’ve already decided what he was trying to imply. It might not be wise to do that based on such a simple remark.
If he brought it up to point out there should be more women on the list, you’ve likely just lost an ally. You’ve pretty much also lost the opportunity to make that point to anyone who noticed your prejudice.
Psychic and social- it’d be difficult for it to be physical! Implying someone is a cryptosexist when they are a feminist, or implying that they are a feminist when they are a cryptosexist, is likely to be a good way to offend them (or make them think poorly of you), and then there are coalition politics to consider.
I’m not trying to be political here, and I don’t think this is about LW or rationality, at all. If that observation is to have a point, I’d suggest an entirely different one:
quotation is a very male form of communication—women quote less and get quoted less
It isn’t just that scripture, constitutions and classics of literature were mostly written by men. Or that men just write more, in science, in journalism, in genre fiction etc. and almost all quotes are from written, rather than spoken expression… That’s all just the “being quoted” side of it. But the quoter participates, and I think quoters are usually male too. Even The Simpsons get quoted mostly by guys rather than than girls, at least around me...
It’s clear to me how quotation as a male form of communication would mean that women quote less, which you could check by comparing the usernames of quoters to the post-weighted sex distriubtion on LW. It’s not as clear to me how it would mean women get quoted less- that would have to be either because of my first or second explanations. (I’m counting “men quote men more frequently than they quote women, and men dominate LW” as part of my second point.)
I honestly didn’t have one. I was just noticing my confusion.
Now that you ask, I’ve come up with the hypothesis that (verbatim) quotation as a form of communication is very male: men quote men far more than women quote women. I do not have a hypothesis on whether women quote men more than men quote women, or vice versa.
Given that historically, men have simply written more than women and more often acquired positions that made you famous enough to be quoted, I would expect that men just get quoted more often in general. The question whether men also actively quote more than women is another one.
Looks like you and everyone else who argued for validity of your trivial subjective observation have been punished by the local knee-jerk feminists, troubled by the unstated potential implications.
I suspect that if you phrased it as “I wish there were [more] women on this list”, you would get a land-slide upvote from the same crowd, while expressing basically the same point.
Looks like you and everyone else who argued for validity of your trivial subjective observation have been punished by the local knee-jerk feminists, troubled by the unstated potential implications.
Um, at present it looks like the grandparent has a single downvote?
From looking at the scripts, it appears first and last names (actually, all capitalised words I think) were counted separately (“Neal: 11, Stephenson: 11” and “Munroe: 13, Randall: 11″, etc) and first names were handedited out (so that’s why both Nassim and Taleb are on the list).
The answer is somewhere between “Nassim Taleb was quoted 16 times, and three of those times the attribution was just ‘Taleb’” and “Nassim Taleb was quoted 13 times and was mentioned in three other quotes (since he’s a controversial figure)”.
Yes. To be exact, not all capitalized words, but all capitalized words that my English spellchecker does not recognize. With all capitalized words the list would start like this:
1523 I
1327 The
558 It
428 If
379 But
Of course the spellchecking method is itself a source of errors. Previous years I never felt like manually correcting these, but checking now it seems like these were the main victims:
Graham 43
Bacon 20
Newton 18
Franklin 18
Shaw 17
Silver 12
Pinker 10
Graham is actually number one. I added them to this list, and also to the “Top original authors by karma collected” list. Not retroactively, though, just for 2013.
With all capitalized words the list would start like this:
You know that feeling you get when you’re coding, and you write something poorly and briefly expect it to Do What You Mean, before being abruptly corrected by the output? I think I just had that feeling at long distance.
Top original authors by number of quotes. (Note that authors and mentions are not disambiguated.)
Graham 43
Russell 41
Feynman 39
Pratchett 30
Chesterton 29
Einstein 27
Nietzsche 25
Heinlein 23
Dennett 22
Johnson 20
Bacon 20
Wilson 19
Newton 18
Franklin 18
Aaronson 18
Shaw 17
Darwin 17
Taleb 16
Dawkins 16
Voltaire 14
Kahneman 14
Wittgenstein 13
Sowell 13
Munroe 13
Aristotle 13
Silver 12
Meier 12
Maynard 12
Hume 12
Asimov 12
Stephenson 11
Sagan 11
Plato 11
Orwell 11
Moldbug 11
Mencken 11
Locke 11
Huxley 11
Hoffer 11
Egan 11
SMBC 10
Pinker 10
Peirce 10
Neumann 10
Keynes 10
Harris 10
Gould 10
Friedman 10
Clark 10
Bakker 10
Minsky 9
Marx 9
Leibniz 9
Holmes 9
Hofstadter 9
Descartes 9
Buffett 9
Thoreau 8
Jefferson 8
Jaynes 8
Godin 8
Dijkstra 8
Deutsch 8
Crowley 8
Aurelius 8
Yudkowsky 7
Wong 7
Wilde 7
Turing 7
Schopenhauer 7
Rochefoucauld 7
Munger 7
Mitchell 7
Medawar 7
Lichtenberg 7
Hanson 7
Goethe 7
Diogenes 7
Churchill 7
Carlyle 7
Babbage 7
Top original authors by karma collected:
800 Graham
564 Russell
434 Chesterton
428 Pratchett
395 Feynman
268 Franklin
265 Dennett
255 Friedman
238 Newton
238 Aaronson
236 Munroe
234 Nietzsche
231 Egan
229 Shaw
210 Heinlein
209 Aristotle
201 Bacon
193 Einstein
183 Wilson
183 Sagan
175 Plato
172 Voltaire
172 Stephenson
170 Pinker
169 Darwin
163 SMBC
163 Kahneman
160 Silver
151 Hofstadter
150 Asimov
149 Mencken
149 Dawkins
144 Moldbug
144 Godin
142 Johnson
136 Wong
133 Buffett
125 Descartes
122 Orwell
121 Taleb
119 Bakker
118 Maynard
114 Minsky
114 Hanson
109 Hume
106 Sowell
102 Keynes
98 Deutsch
97 Churchill
94 Lichtenberg
91 Dijkstra
90 Jaynes
90 Hoffer
89 Marx
89 Holmes
88 Wittgenstein
87 Neumann
87 Harris
85 Jefferson
79 Huxley
76 Leibniz
73 Wilde
72 Locke
70 Mitchell
65 Meier
62 Peirce
61 Munger
58 Clark
57 Gould
54 Aurelius
48 Babbage
47 Medawar
46 Crowley
44 Diogenes
41 Carlyle
40 Yudkowsky
35 Turing
34 Schopenhauer
28 Rochefoucauld
28 Goethe
27 Thoreau
I do not recognize any names of women in this.
Could you please spell out your implication? There are a number of ways to interpret your statement.
What are they?
From this list of authors by number of quotes, I can’t distinguish this collection from a collection that is exclusive to quotes from men (and unnamed sources).
I ask to be shown a distinction, i.e. a female who was quoted seven times or more.
Or just once, really. I haven’t seen even a single quote from a female when skimming the main list.
So, I think my favorite female public rationalist is Byron Katie, who has a number of great rationality quotes, most of which boil down to this one (which is I think her only quote in the LW RQs):
Close to it is one by Karen Pryor:
Above that is Megan McArdle, and the highest quote I saw that was probably by a woman was this one (I didn’t look in to whether or not that Ashley is female), and this is the highest one I saw I’m pretty confident was by a woman. (A number of them were attributed to internet callsigns, which are difficult to reliably map to sex.)
If you think that more female authors on the list would be an improvement, then find female rationalists who say things worth quoting, and then quote them.
That’s not your implication.
Clearly, you said that to make a point. You’re not making a random observation; it’s not the equivalent of “I only found five people in the list whose names are greater than 14 letters long”. So what’s your point?
Of course the observation isn’t random. Gender imbalance is obviously more interesting than name length and the difference in curiosity needs no justification.
Let’s help chaosmage express himself a bit: “I do not recognize any names of women in this. I wonder why that is.”
Discuss.
Which interest is not obvious. Here’s a handful of possible points which could be made by that observation:
Women generate less and worse rationality quotes then men.
LW does not post rationality quotes generated by women as frequently.
LW does not upvote rationality quotes generated by women as frequently.
Someone trying to make the first point, and someone trying to make the third point, have radically different interpretations of the observed data, and the resulting conversation will be very different depending on which point you think they’re trying to make.
What’s the reason we have to browbeat him to constrain the discussion to some specific point? To me it’s obvious several points could be made and the observation could be a sufficient discussion starter.
Particularly on political issues, a “I observed X. Discuss.” has the potential to be a trap. Each of the points I made in the grandparent post can be construed as a political attack- the first on women, the second two on the LW community- and simultaneously attacking everyone because of a lack of clarity is, generally speaking, a conversational and political mistake. It’s not obvious which issue to engage with, and engaging with the incorrect issue is dangerous.
It’s not difficult to deduce what kind of a response to the implication question is a socially acceptable one. I might also have no implication. Even if my implication was benign I wouldn’t give you the answer. I don’t want to reward coercion or biasing a conversation before it’s even started. I don’t know why people pretend to expect honest answers to such questioning.
If you expect everyone to be totally biased in the conversation then instead of picking the right soldiers for the battle I would suggest concluding that the topic is simply too political to discuss in a rational manner.
If you browbeat people for making observations on issues that might need fixing you’re limiting your options for doing any fixing.
If you are saying that he can figure out whether lying or telling the truth about his implication is socially acceptable, sure.
The real problem is that he already had an implication, but he’s using the fact that it’s an implication to maintain plausible deniability by not coming out and saying it. Saying it may be socially unacceptable, but that’s because making the implication is also socially unacceptable.
It seems to me you’ve already decided what he was trying to imply. It might not be wise to do that based on such a simple remark.
If he brought it up to point out there should be more women on the list, you’ve likely just lost an ally. You’ve pretty much also lost the opportunity to make that point to anyone who noticed your prejudice.
What kind of danger are we talking about?
Psychic and social- it’d be difficult for it to be physical! Implying someone is a cryptosexist when they are a feminist, or implying that they are a feminist when they are a cryptosexist, is likely to be a good way to offend them (or make them think poorly of you), and then there are coalition politics to consider.
I’m not trying to be political here, and I don’t think this is about LW or rationality, at all. If that observation is to have a point, I’d suggest an entirely different one:
quotation is a very male form of communication—women quote less and get quoted less
It isn’t just that scripture, constitutions and classics of literature were mostly written by men. Or that men just write more, in science, in journalism, in genre fiction etc. and almost all quotes are from written, rather than spoken expression… That’s all just the “being quoted” side of it. But the quoter participates, and I think quoters are usually male too. Even The Simpsons get quoted mostly by guys rather than than girls, at least around me...
It’s clear to me how quotation as a male form of communication would mean that women quote less, which you could check by comparing the usernames of quoters to the post-weighted sex distriubtion on LW. It’s not as clear to me how it would mean women get quoted less- that would have to be either because of my first or second explanations. (I’m counting “men quote men more frequently than they quote women, and men dominate LW” as part of my second point.)
I honestly didn’t have one. I was just noticing my confusion.
Now that you ask, I’ve come up with the hypothesis that (verbatim) quotation as a form of communication is very male: men quote men far more than women quote women. I do not have a hypothesis on whether women quote men more than men quote women, or vice versa.
Given that historically, men have simply written more than women and more often acquired positions that made you famous enough to be quoted, I would expect that men just get quoted more often in general. The question whether men also actively quote more than women is another one.
Looks like you and everyone else who argued for validity of your trivial subjective observation have been punished by the local knee-jerk feminists, troubled by the unstated potential implications.
I suspect that if you phrased it as “I wish there were [more] women on this list”, you would get a land-slide upvote from the same crowd, while expressing basically the same point.
Um, at present it looks like the grandparent has a single downvote?
16 times Taleb and 13 times Nassim. What’s happening hear, is there another Nassim?
From looking at the scripts, it appears first and last names (actually, all capitalised words I think) were counted separately (“Neal: 11, Stephenson: 11” and “Munroe: 13, Randall: 11″, etc) and first names were handedited out (so that’s why both Nassim and Taleb are on the list).
The answer is somewhere between “Nassim Taleb was quoted 16 times, and three of those times the attribution was just ‘Taleb’” and “Nassim Taleb was quoted 13 times and was mentioned in three other quotes (since he’s a controversial figure)”.
Yes. To be exact, not all capitalized words, but all capitalized words that my English spellchecker does not recognize. With all capitalized words the list would start like this:
1523 I
1327 The
558 It
428 If
379 But
Of course the spellchecking method is itself a source of errors. Previous years I never felt like manually correcting these, but checking now it seems like these were the main victims:
Graham 43
Bacon 20
Newton 18
Franklin 18
Shaw 17
Silver 12
Pinker 10
Graham is actually number one. I added them to this list, and also to the “Top original authors by karma collected” list. Not retroactively, though, just for 2013.
You know that feeling you get when you’re coding, and you write something poorly and briefly expect it to Do What You Mean, before being abruptly corrected by the output? I think I just had that feeling at long distance.