If I treat everybody the same, I’m discriminating against women; if I treat them differently, I’m also discriminating against women.
You’re saying this like “the same” refers to a fixed value, as opposed to a value that you can manipulate and could nudge towards something that is more balanced in how it affects men and women.
a value that you can manipulate and could nudge towards something that is more balanced in how it affects men and women.
This would be ideal, but men don’t know how to make it balanced. We just don’t have the information or the understanding; it seems chaotic/confusing. We’re basically just groping in the dark and that alone has sometimes offended women when it wouldn’t offend men. If you have any ideas, even half-formed ones, it would really help.
men don’t know how to make it balanced. We just don’t have the information
I have to take exception to this.
Different men know this to varying degrees, just as different women do. It depends a lot on how much I pay attention to other people’s stated preferences, how skilled I am at inferring their unstated preferences, and how direct the people I interact with are in stating their preferences (which in turn depends on a lot of things, not least of which whether my prior behavior indicates that I will adjust my behavior in response).
Mostly, the piece of this that’s within my control is how much attention I pay to people’s preferences, and how much I adjust my behavior in response.
men don’t know how to make it balanced. We just don’t have the information
I have to take exception to this.
So must I and at several levels! I would perhaps not reject a claim “males are on average less proficient at this kind of skill than females are” but nothing more general than that.
Please explain what you mean. How would you measure how balanced a particular value was in how it affects men and women? Would you weigh it by the number of men and women present on LessWrong?
A key problem is that there are two different, conflicting definitions of “discrimination”, and we’re asked to satisfy both. One says that “discrimination” means “following a policy that favors the natural inclinations of men more than the natural inclinations of women”. The other says “discrimination” means “supposing that men and women have different natural inclinations”.
If I can manipulate a value to be more balanced in how it affects men and women, that presumes that men and women do in fact have different natural inclinations. That would mean that instead of choosing a “balanced” value, with which to treat everyone, I could optimize better by treating women one way, and men a different way.
For the people you interact with regularly, you will quickly accumulate the data. For the people you don’t often interact with, console yourself with the fact that they don’t matter all that much.
Or you could operate using priors for individuals that match whatever little you happen to know about them. For instance their gender. For some purposes that is a lot of information.
If you find it best to treat males one way (until they individually complain) and to treat females a different way (until they individually complain), then go ahead.
But (speaking to Phil, now) don’t cry about the unfairness of the existence of people who don’t fit your stereotypes. Don’t bitch that you are receiving mixed messages, when you receive them from mixed people. And definitely do not appoint one woman as spokesperson for womankind by asking what she wants “as a woman”.
There is no way to get through life without sometimes offending people. Live with it. But still, do the best you can. Rules change. Keep paying attention, and you will keep learning.
I made my reply because your quip made sense only as a response to a straw man. All the worse because it so smoothly presupposes a position that is trivially and obviously silly.
But (speaking to Phil, now) don’t cry about the unfairness of the existence of people who don’t fit your stereotypes. Don’t bitch that you are receiving mixed messages, when you receive them from mixed people.
Your presentation here is a more significant misrepresentation of Phil and this time it is one that is overtly poor form. In particular it is condescending and riddled with negative labeling while at the same time demonstrating that you completely failed to comprehend his words.
For that matter the re-framing of my statement as treating (males or) females a different way until they individually complain wasn’t much better. “Act like a Bayesian” isn’t exactly an outlandish personal habit for someone to have and complaints (hopefully) don’t come into it. If taking into account everything you do know while you are still making first impressions doesn’t reduce complaints then you are quite possibly doing it wrong.
I don’t want to model why the reactions are this way, but I feel capable of saying this much:
On average, a dismissive/confrontational/snarky tone will be less palatable to potential female readers than potential male readers (even within our usual demographics).
And on average, a policy of explicitly adopting a different tone with replies to females than replies to males will offend many people of both genders.
So unless there is a big gain to being dimissive/confrontational/snarky, the optimally social thing to do in the current situation is to drop that tone as far as possible (without sacrificing clarity of communication). Not that I do this well or always, but I’m aware of the problem.
Is there, in your opinion, a big gain to be had from (say) the original version of your critique over the amended version? Or is it an onerous requirement to come up with the amended version in the first place?
On average, a dismissive/confrontational/snarky tone will be less palatable to potential female readers than potential male readers (even within our usual demographics).
Confrontational yes, dismissive—quite possibly, snarky probably not. Whatever difference there is in communication preferences across the sexes is stylistic more than a fundamental difference in ‘niceness’.
I know what you mean. That is another more stereotypically male kind of nasty. But a word doesn’t spring to mind. Ok, I lie. But I’m far too polite to use any of the obvious candidates! ;)
Is there, in your opinion, a big gain to be had from (say) the original version of your critique over the amended version? Or is it an onerous requirement to come up with the amended version in the first place?
No, the amended version is better. But now I’ve moved on to a more general issue; and being able to solve the particular instance that began this, does not solve the more general problem.
I find myself vaguely skeptical that you are truly this puzzled about the topic at hand. If you really are, forgive me for my minsinterpretation, but I’m not sure that I can help. If you are not, I may be able to be helpful, but you’ll need to act in better faith.
No, I am truly puzzled, and acting in good faith. What do you, as a woman, want?
If you say, “I want you to act the same way towards everyone, but in a way that is more balanced between the way you should act towards men, and the way you should act towards women”, then that is illogical, as I explained above. It assumes both that men and women are the same (hence we should treat them the same), and that they are not (hence we should adjust our behavior to be somewhere between two gender-specific optimums).
This is my interpretation: quantify the masculinity/femininity of a response between 0 and 1 (where 0 is masculine and 1 feminine). You are making the correct statement that you cannot both have a function that returns 1 for females and 0 for males and also returns the same value for both sexes. Alicorn is asking where you would set the return value of your function that doesn’t take sex as an input.
Because if you say “I treat everyone equally by always responding with a 0,” then while you satisfy the sex-blindness requirement you have a disproportionate impact, just as if you always responded with a 1. Alicorn’s suggestion is that you could move the 0 to something else. One gets into trouble when trying to figure out whether the target should be .5 or .1, though (assuming we’re 90% male here).
I almost agree, except that this sets up a false dichotomy between a style palatable to men and one palatable to women. I think it’s quite possible, without too much effort, to craft a style that improves in both those respects over one’s ‘default’ style.
That was my interpretation of the Alicorn/Perplexed conversation; my feeling is that politeness is positively received by most people of both genders but women tend to care more about it. It’s a nontrivial problem to be polite quickly, and many people dislike having their time wasted, but man is that a useful skill to have/learn.
Then as I predicted, I’m probably not going to be able to help you.
What do you, as a woman, want?
I don’t know what parts of my desires are because of or even meaningfully correlated with my femininity. I could tell you what I want, but I don’t think you would understand it, if this is comment is a good-faith expression of your genuine puzzlement. I don’t know how to bridge this inferential distance. I suppose I might be able to come up with some object-level heuristics, but if you couldn’t understand why I’d come up with them, would you use them?
I could tell you what I want, but I don’t think you would understand it, if this is comment is a good-faith expression of your genuine puzzlement.
This isn’t an open-ended question. I am aware of only 3 possible answers, any of which are easy to understand.
I want you to treat men and women the same way; and not to take gender into consideration.
I want you to treat men and women differently.
Here is the flaw in your reasoning that these are the only two choices.
And I, in turn, am skeptical that you are acting in good faith, when I put forward a simple question, and instead of answering it, you write a reply that is longer and more complicated than an answer would be, on the grounds that I wouldn’t understand your answer, couldn’t make use of it, and/or don’t really want it anyway.
My more-charitable interpretation is that you have a different idea of what “the topic at hand” is.
The answer to your question is probably (3). The flaw in the dichotomy between (1) and (2) is the conjunction “and not to take gender into consideration.”
There are ways to take the existence of gender difference into consideration without treating men and women differently. I think this is what Alicorn was referring to, and the worst that can be charged is that this was unclear (and not that anyone was acting in bad faith).
To make this obvious, consider a world where men speak English and French, and women speak English and German. Then, in recognition of the difference between genders, everyone would be wise to just speak English. This does not require speaking differently to men and women, nor ignoring gender differences (perhaps German and French are slightly more efficient languages than English, other than this drawback). You can act “the same” towards men and women, but change your actions so they are appropriate in a world containing both men and women.
You address this issue earlier, pointing out that this approach indeed suppose that men and women are different (an assertion with which no intelligent person I know would argue). I think no rational person is going to hold “discrimination” in general against you. We say different things to people with different personalities, and when you learn someone’s gender you should update your beliefs about their personalities. The problem is that many people update their beliefs about people of the other gender incorrectly or do not fully understand the consequences of their discrimination. This leads many rational people to make decisions which are worse than those produced by the “ignore gender” heuristic. The social response to this problem is sometimes to conclude “all discrimination is bad,” but among more reasonable people it is to respond harshly to damaging forms of discrimination but to accept forms of discrimination which are particularly well justified.
You’re missing Phil’s point. In the example he would speak French with men (outside mixed company) and German with women, and there would be nothing objectionable to this if that language distribution was indeed universal. The problems are that some women don’t speak German, some prefer French and sometimes people forget they are in mixed company and should speak English. It would be best to speak English in public and with strangers of either gender and French or German only with people whose language preferences you know.
(There may be also some men who prefer German, but they hardly ever complain, perhaps because hardly anyone addresses them in German so they feel no entitlement, or because they see their preference as embarrassing and prefer not to make it public)
Except that the statements here are public, and if you speak French in reply to one person, then people who don’t speak French are going to be left out of the conversation. English-only is the proper Schelling point for this public forum.
It was a metaphor. The actual property being referenced has fine enough gradations that there is no Schelling point, nor a particular point that can be agreed by everyone to be “English”. (Nor is aiming at a point in this space any guarantee of hitting it., nor will people describe the same points with the same words).
I want you to treat men and women the same way; and not to take gender into consideration.
What does “not taking gender into consideration” actually mean? I hope it doesn’t mean “treating everyone as if they were male”—and yet in the ancestor post you seem to imply that it you took gender into consideration, it would only be your behaviour towards women that would have to be altered (being nicer to them), not your behavior towards men.
Do you see your logical inconsistency here? If by taking gender into account your attitude towards men doesn’t change but your attitude towards women changes, that means you’re ALREADY taking gender into account: you’re just taking it into account by making “male-gender interaction” the “default” interaction, instead of figuring out what “ungendered interaction” would be actually like.
If I actually believed men and women were the same, as a man who has interacted mostly with men, it would almost exclusively change my beliefs about women (I would think women were secretly just like I believe men to be, since that is the simplest way to explain my observations). Its not clear why I would believe such a thing, but if I thought pretending there was no difference was a good idea and if I really wanted to pretend vigorously, I would basically be “treating everyone as if they were male.” If I were then to stop pretending, I would only change my behavior towards women.
I don’t think this is a good position, but it is not inconsistent (its also what some people imprecisely purport to do and ask others to do).
What does “not taking gender into consideration” actually mean? I hope it doesn’t mean “treating everyone as if they were male”
That would not be a remotely reasonable interpretation. It would be a trivially silly position.
Do you see your logical inconsistency here?
You just found something bad that you ‘hoped he didn’t do’, assumed the most conveniently negative world, decided Phil was in it and declared him logically inconsistent. This is not remotely reasonable. Phil has made his actual logic overwhelmingly clear. He even supplied a numbered list for your convenience.
It is all well and good to make the point that a balanced one size fits all communication strategy will take into account all potential conversation partners. That is obviously the practical approach.
One of the basic rules of polite discourse—and this applies to either gender—is that you should always assume a positive understanding when there is doubt or a potential detail is not specified. This was a situation where “Yes, and” or “We must remember that” would flow nicely. The point is then much more likely to be accepted with full agreement by all sides. This applies for either gender and for that matter even when using Crocker’s rules.
(I should note, by the way, that saying someone is being logically inconsistent comes across as a significant charge in this particular environment. ie. I prefer to be told I’m being a @#%@. At least that is a subjective accusation not an objectively false one.)
That would not be a remotely reasonable interpretation. It would be a trivially silly position.
It’s not clear to me where this is coming from, since “treat everyone as though they were male” is probably the most common first approach to sex-blindness.
People, particularly intelligent people, are notorious for underestimating inferential distance so I can not pretend to speak to just how blatantly obvious a particular concept is to a general population. I can say that in the context it is overwhelmingly clear that Phil is not making this mistake. He more or less assumed ‘not treating everyone as though they were male’ as the starting point in the discussion and worked from there.
The first time someone’s position is misrepresented it is a simple mistake. Once it becomes a pattern it points to something deeper. In this case a conflict between logical reasoning and (in this case extremely minor) social politics. These are two incompatible kinds of thought and it is always a mistake to discuss a question of what people ‘should do’ from a perspective of logical coherency. Well, unless you are masochistic.
(Note that this interpretation is giving the maximal benefit of the doubt. That is, not assuming that the people Phil is talking to actually lack comprehension skills.)
I can say that in the context it is overwhelmingly clear that Phil is not making this mistake.
Overwhelmingly clear to you, perhaps. The context I had for his original claim was:
If this is a gender-specific thing that drives women away, then the obvious solution would be to have users identify themselves as women at signup, and have their usernames show up in pink, so we know to be nice to them. Yet I don’t think this would be less offensive to women! If I treat everybody the same, I’m discriminating against women; if I treat them differently, I’m also discriminating against women.
This to me strongly suggests that men are the default, and women are an aberrant case, with the implication that treating everyone the same means treating everyone like a man (since no one currently has a pink username).
Now, Alicorn could have worded her response better- it wasn’t clear she was saying “why not be nicer to everyone?”- and that could have cleared up some of the confusion much earlier.
Note that this interpretation is giving the maximal benefit of the doubt. That is, not assuming that the people Phil is talking to actually lack comprehension skills.
Then… why did you use words like “misinterpretation” instead of “miscommunication”? Saying “oh, both people were unclear, it looks like we were talking past one another ” is far better than the approach you took. To me, your comment reads like defensiveness in response to an accusation of sexism, as well as dismissal by bringing up “social politics” in contrast to “logical reasoning.” (If you were to gender those two phrases, which would be which?)
Then… why did you use words like “misinterpretation” instead of “miscommunication”?
They have different meanings, one applied and the difference mattered.
Saying “oh, both people were unclear, it looks like we were talking past one another ” is far better than the approach you took.
Not for the purpose of my statement. There could even be place for an additional message that the kind of behavior I described is antisocial, rude and highly undesirable. Sufficiently objectionable as to make all considerations of ‘bluntness’ trivial by comparison.
as well as dismissal by bringing up “social politics” in contrast to “logical reasoning.” (If you were to gender those two phrases, which would be which?)
You ask that question as though it should provide some rhetorical support for a point you were making. It appears instead to be loosely related tangent. I meant precisely what I said about social politics and logic. It is a message that is helpful for people who encounter questions like the one Phil asked and seek genuine understanding of how such situations work.
Questions of “should” just aren’t about creating a coherent protocol of behavior. Sometimes a coherent protocol emerges and that is great but ultimately having situations in which you are ‘doomed if you do; doomed if you don’t’ a standard part of how social rules work. The trick to navigating them is to stop expecting reason to apply and start gaming them like everyone else.
There could even be place for an additional message that the kind of behavior I described is antisocial, rude and highly undesirable. Sufficiently objectionable as to make all considerations of ‘bluntness’ trivial by comparison.
I feel this should be elaborated on, as I don’t want to misunderstand what you’re getting at here.
I can say that in the context it is overwhelmingly clear that Phil is not making this mistake.
It is not overwhelmingly clear to me. It wasn’t overwhemlingly clear to Vaniver. I don’t think paulfchristiano found it overwhelmingly clear either (as he argued against my own post from the opposite direction, and he certainly comprehended my meaning much better than you seemed to do).
Then why would differentiating according to gender only modify Phil’s attitude towards women, rather towards both genders?
Why are you attacking my position but ignore the reasons I mentioned for having it?
You just found something bad that you ‘hoped he didn’t do’, assumed the most conveniently negative world, decided Phil was in it and declared him logically inconsistent.
No, I did not, I said clearly why it seemed to me he was doing it.
As long as we’re talking about our personal preferences, let me note that I don’t appreciate being told I “assumed” stuff, when I instead provided in detail the reasoning that led me to the conclusion.
Then why would differentiating according to gender only modify Phil’s attitude towards women, rather towards both genders?
You said that, not Phil.
Why are you attacking my position but ignore the reasons I mentioned for having it?
Because you didn’t present any good reasons for having your position. Quite frankly and since you asked, I didn’t believe you intended your mention of ‘implication’ to be an argument that your caricature of Phil’s position was actually justified by the literal meaning because if so it was a terrible argument.
As long as we’re talking about our personal preferences, let me note that I don’t appreciate being told I “assumed” stuff, when I instead provided in detail the reasoning that led me to the conclusion.
I assumed some semblance of good faith from the opening “I hope you didn’t”. As though you were at least acknowledging that you were reading something into his words that is at very best extremely ambiguous. I did not think it was rhetoric spin—because given the context it would have just made your comment worse.
I said to Phil “in the ancestor post you seem to imply that if you took gender into consideration, it would only be your behaviour towards women that would have to be altered (being nicer to them), not your behavior towards men.”
My comment meant precisely what it said. Phil spoke about a possible solution of female members’ names being colored pink so that he knows to be nicer at them. He didn’t speak about male member’s names being colored blue so that he knows to be rougher at them. That’s an obvious asymmetry which requires an explanation.
If you have an explanation, provide it. I provided one, and paulfchristiano provided one, but you just ignored the whole point and told me I’m assuming the most convenient negative explanation.
I treat people a certain way. Someone suggested that the way I treat people is not well-tolerated by women. I said, among other things, that treating women differently to accomodate them might not be appreciated by women. Alicorn suggested that (to paraphrase), men like to be treated with c=3 and women like to be treated with c=7, so I should treat everyone with c = something in-between 3 and 7.
I asked whether that should be weighted (by the number of men and women present, or the number of men and women desired, or not at all); but more importantly, replied that that is inconsistent: Either
There is no significant mean difference between the way men and women like to be treated, or
There is a difference, and therefore I should treat men with c=3 and women with c=7.
Saying there is a difference, and I can use my knowledge of that difference to compute c = (9x3 + 1x7)/10 = 3.4 (assuming LW is 90% male); but I can’t use my knowledge of that difference to treat men with c=3 and women with c=7, seems illogical. If the preferences of men are distributed normally around c=3, and the preferences of women are distributed normally around c=7, using gender as a factor in my model will result in lower error, no matter how great the variance in these distributions is.
I can imagine possible justifications for the c=3.4 approach; but I can’t imagine any justifications strong enough not just to rule out even considering the c(gender) approach for all applications, but also to impugn the morality of those who consider it.
I am harping on this because it is an error in reasoning that, in American intellectual society, is not only committed routinely, but is generally assumed to be morally superior to any rational approach.
People derive lots of negative utility from noticing that they are being treated differently according to gender. If you do so, you are unlikely to be able to keep that a secret. Therefore, you should treat both genders the same.
That might be a good reason, but IMHO not good enough to take the option off the table.
Also, it seems to me the opposite may be more true: People like being treated in ways that indicate they are successfully conforming to gender stereotypes. Boys and men like being given the signal that they are masculine; girls and women, that they are feminine.
This is true for some stereotypes but not for others. In addition, people don’t want to feel that you are treating them differently because of their gender, even if they’d feel good if you treated them differently because you noticed their conformance to stereotypes. People will probably be able to tell what you are doing.
And I, in turn, am skeptical that you are acting in good faith
That was my first impression too and nearly commented as much. However the grandparent does serve as an indicator that the charitable interpretation of “[Alicorn has] a different idea of what “the topic at hand is” is the correct one.
The answer is like 3, but I don’t think you would understand if I explained (based on priors derived from how little understanding-of-me-when-I-say-stuff you have exhibited in this thread so far). I suppose I could explain for onlookers’ benefit, but I don’t want to; this conversation has left a bad taste in my mouth. I will exit it now.
You’re saying this like “the same” refers to a fixed value, as opposed to a value that you can manipulate and could nudge towards something that is more balanced in how it affects men and women.
This would be ideal, but men don’t know how to make it balanced. We just don’t have the information or the understanding; it seems chaotic/confusing. We’re basically just groping in the dark and that alone has sometimes offended women when it wouldn’t offend men. If you have any ideas, even half-formed ones, it would really help.
I have to take exception to this.
Different men know this to varying degrees, just as different women do. It depends a lot on how much I pay attention to other people’s stated preferences, how skilled I am at inferring their unstated preferences, and how direct the people I interact with are in stating their preferences (which in turn depends on a lot of things, not least of which whether my prior behavior indicates that I will adjust my behavior in response).
Mostly, the piece of this that’s within my control is how much attention I pay to people’s preferences, and how much I adjust my behavior in response.
So must I and at several levels! I would perhaps not reject a claim “males are on average less proficient at this kind of skill than females are” but nothing more general than that.
Please explain what you mean. How would you measure how balanced a particular value was in how it affects men and women? Would you weigh it by the number of men and women present on LessWrong?
A key problem is that there are two different, conflicting definitions of “discrimination”, and we’re asked to satisfy both. One says that “discrimination” means “following a policy that favors the natural inclinations of men more than the natural inclinations of women”. The other says “discrimination” means “supposing that men and women have different natural inclinations”.
If I can manipulate a value to be more balanced in how it affects men and women, that presumes that men and women do in fact have different natural inclinations. That would mean that instead of choosing a “balanced” value, with which to treat everyone, I could optimize better by treating women one way, and men a different way.
You could optimize better yet if you treated everyone as an individual.
Only if you have sufficient data on the preferences of everyone individually.
For the people you interact with regularly, you will quickly accumulate the data. For the people you don’t often interact with, console yourself with the fact that they don’t matter all that much.
Or you could operate using priors for individuals that match whatever little you happen to know about them. For instance their gender. For some purposes that is a lot of information.
If you find it best to treat males one way (until they individually complain) and to treat females a different way (until they individually complain), then go ahead.
But (speaking to Phil, now) don’t cry about the unfairness of the existence of people who don’t fit your stereotypes. Don’t bitch that you are receiving mixed messages, when you receive them from mixed people. And definitely do not appoint one woman as spokesperson for womankind by asking what she wants “as a woman”.
There is no way to get through life without sometimes offending people. Live with it. But still, do the best you can. Rules change. Keep paying attention, and you will keep learning.
I made my reply because your quip made sense only as a response to a straw man. All the worse because it so smoothly presupposes a position that is trivially and obviously silly.
Your presentation here is a more significant misrepresentation of Phil and this time it is one that is overtly poor form. In particular it is condescending and riddled with negative labeling while at the same time demonstrating that you completely failed to comprehend his words.
For that matter the re-framing of my statement as treating (males or) females a different way until they individually complain wasn’t much better. “Act like a Bayesian” isn’t exactly an outlandish personal habit for someone to have and complaints (hopefully) don’t come into it. If taking into account everything you do know while you are still making first impressions doesn’t reduce complaints then you are quite possibly doing it wrong.
I don’t want to model why the reactions are this way, but I feel capable of saying this much:
On average, a dismissive/confrontational/snarky tone will be less palatable to potential female readers than potential male readers (even within our usual demographics).
And on average, a policy of explicitly adopting a different tone with replies to females than replies to males will offend many people of both genders.
So unless there is a big gain to being dimissive/confrontational/snarky, the optimally social thing to do in the current situation is to drop that tone as far as possible (without sacrificing clarity of communication). Not that I do this well or always, but I’m aware of the problem.
Is there, in your opinion, a big gain to be had from (say) the original version of your critique over the amended version? Or is it an onerous requirement to come up with the amended version in the first place?
Confrontational yes, dismissive—quite possibly, snarky probably not. Whatever difference there is in communication preferences across the sexes is stylistic more than a fundamental difference in ‘niceness’.
Oh, I agree. I’m talking about the particular style of “heh, what an idiot” comments. Is there a more accurate adjective than ‘snarky’ for that style?
I know what you mean. That is another more stereotypically male kind of nasty. But a word doesn’t spring to mind. Ok, I lie. But I’m far too polite to use any of the obvious candidates! ;)
No, the amended version is better. But now I’ve moved on to a more general issue; and being able to solve the particular instance that began this, does not solve the more general problem.
Well, what I’m saying is that implementing the algorithm that produced that emendation would help more generally.
I agree with Perplexed.
I find myself vaguely skeptical that you are truly this puzzled about the topic at hand. If you really are, forgive me for my minsinterpretation, but I’m not sure that I can help. If you are not, I may be able to be helpful, but you’ll need to act in better faith.
No, I am truly puzzled, and acting in good faith. What do you, as a woman, want?
If you say, “I want you to act the same way towards everyone, but in a way that is more balanced between the way you should act towards men, and the way you should act towards women”, then that is illogical, as I explained above. It assumes both that men and women are the same (hence we should treat them the same), and that they are not (hence we should adjust our behavior to be somewhere between two gender-specific optimums).
This is my interpretation: quantify the masculinity/femininity of a response between 0 and 1 (where 0 is masculine and 1 feminine). You are making the correct statement that you cannot both have a function that returns 1 for females and 0 for males and also returns the same value for both sexes. Alicorn is asking where you would set the return value of your function that doesn’t take sex as an input.
Because if you say “I treat everyone equally by always responding with a 0,” then while you satisfy the sex-blindness requirement you have a disproportionate impact, just as if you always responded with a 1. Alicorn’s suggestion is that you could move the 0 to something else. One gets into trouble when trying to figure out whether the target should be .5 or .1, though (assuming we’re 90% male here).
I almost agree, except that this sets up a false dichotomy between a style palatable to men and one palatable to women. I think it’s quite possible, without too much effort, to craft a style that improves in both those respects over one’s ‘default’ style.
That was my interpretation of the Alicorn/Perplexed conversation; my feeling is that politeness is positively received by most people of both genders but women tend to care more about it. It’s a nontrivial problem to be polite quickly, and many people dislike having their time wasted, but man is that a useful skill to have/learn.
Your logical questioning is reasonable. Your mistake is in thinking reasonableness or logical coherency is important in matters of politics.
Then as I predicted, I’m probably not going to be able to help you.
I don’t know what parts of my desires are because of or even meaningfully correlated with my femininity. I could tell you what I want, but I don’t think you would understand it, if this is comment is a good-faith expression of your genuine puzzlement. I don’t know how to bridge this inferential distance. I suppose I might be able to come up with some object-level heuristics, but if you couldn’t understand why I’d come up with them, would you use them?
This isn’t an open-ended question. I am aware of only 3 possible answers, any of which are easy to understand.
I want you to treat men and women the same way; and not to take gender into consideration.
I want you to treat men and women differently.
Here is the flaw in your reasoning that these are the only two choices.
And I, in turn, am skeptical that you are acting in good faith, when I put forward a simple question, and instead of answering it, you write a reply that is longer and more complicated than an answer would be, on the grounds that I wouldn’t understand your answer, couldn’t make use of it, and/or don’t really want it anyway.
My more-charitable interpretation is that you have a different idea of what “the topic at hand” is.
The answer to your question is probably (3). The flaw in the dichotomy between (1) and (2) is the conjunction “and not to take gender into consideration.”
There are ways to take the existence of gender difference into consideration without treating men and women differently. I think this is what Alicorn was referring to, and the worst that can be charged is that this was unclear (and not that anyone was acting in bad faith).
To make this obvious, consider a world where men speak English and French, and women speak English and German. Then, in recognition of the difference between genders, everyone would be wise to just speak English. This does not require speaking differently to men and women, nor ignoring gender differences (perhaps German and French are slightly more efficient languages than English, other than this drawback). You can act “the same” towards men and women, but change your actions so they are appropriate in a world containing both men and women.
You address this issue earlier, pointing out that this approach indeed suppose that men and women are different (an assertion with which no intelligent person I know would argue). I think no rational person is going to hold “discrimination” in general against you. We say different things to people with different personalities, and when you learn someone’s gender you should update your beliefs about their personalities. The problem is that many people update their beliefs about people of the other gender incorrectly or do not fully understand the consequences of their discrimination. This leads many rational people to make decisions which are worse than those produced by the “ignore gender” heuristic. The social response to this problem is sometimes to conclude “all discrimination is bad,” but among more reasonable people it is to respond harshly to damaging forms of discrimination but to accept forms of discrimination which are particularly well justified.
You’re missing Phil’s point. In the example he would speak French with men (outside mixed company) and German with women, and there would be nothing objectionable to this if that language distribution was indeed universal. The problems are that some women don’t speak German, some prefer French and sometimes people forget they are in mixed company and should speak English. It would be best to speak English in public and with strangers of either gender and French or German only with people whose language preferences you know.
(There may be also some men who prefer German, but they hardly ever complain, perhaps because hardly anyone addresses them in German so they feel no entitlement, or because they see their preference as embarrassing and prefer not to make it public)
No, no, you’ve both got it wrong. You speak Italian to women, French to men, and German to your horse.
Except that the statements here are public, and if you speak French in reply to one person, then people who don’t speak French are going to be left out of the conversation. English-only is the proper Schelling point for this public forum.
It was a metaphor. The actual property being referenced has fine enough gradations that there is no Schelling point, nor a particular point that can be agreed by everyone to be “English”. (Nor is aiming at a point in this space any guarantee of hitting it., nor will people describe the same points with the same words).
What does “not taking gender into consideration” actually mean? I hope it doesn’t mean “treating everyone as if they were male”—and yet in the ancestor post you seem to imply that it you took gender into consideration, it would only be your behaviour towards women that would have to be altered (being nicer to them), not your behavior towards men.
Do you see your logical inconsistency here? If by taking gender into account your attitude towards men doesn’t change but your attitude towards women changes, that means you’re ALREADY taking gender into account: you’re just taking it into account by making “male-gender interaction” the “default” interaction, instead of figuring out what “ungendered interaction” would be actually like.
If I actually believed men and women were the same, as a man who has interacted mostly with men, it would almost exclusively change my beliefs about women (I would think women were secretly just like I believe men to be, since that is the simplest way to explain my observations). Its not clear why I would believe such a thing, but if I thought pretending there was no difference was a good idea and if I really wanted to pretend vigorously, I would basically be “treating everyone as if they were male.” If I were then to stop pretending, I would only change my behavior towards women.
I don’t think this is a good position, but it is not inconsistent (its also what some people imprecisely purport to do and ask others to do).
That would not be a remotely reasonable interpretation. It would be a trivially silly position.
You just found something bad that you ‘hoped he didn’t do’, assumed the most conveniently negative world, decided Phil was in it and declared him logically inconsistent. This is not remotely reasonable. Phil has made his actual logic overwhelmingly clear. He even supplied a numbered list for your convenience.
It is all well and good to make the point that a balanced one size fits all communication strategy will take into account all potential conversation partners. That is obviously the practical approach.
One of the basic rules of polite discourse—and this applies to either gender—is that you should always assume a positive understanding when there is doubt or a potential detail is not specified. This was a situation where “Yes, and” or “We must remember that” would flow nicely. The point is then much more likely to be accepted with full agreement by all sides. This applies for either gender and for that matter even when using Crocker’s rules.
(I should note, by the way, that saying someone is being logically inconsistent comes across as a significant charge in this particular environment. ie. I prefer to be told I’m being a @#%@. At least that is a subjective accusation not an objectively false one.)
It’s not clear to me where this is coming from, since “treat everyone as though they were male” is probably the most common first approach to sex-blindness.
People, particularly intelligent people, are notorious for underestimating inferential distance so I can not pretend to speak to just how blatantly obvious a particular concept is to a general population. I can say that in the context it is overwhelmingly clear that Phil is not making this mistake. He more or less assumed ‘not treating everyone as though they were male’ as the starting point in the discussion and worked from there.
The first time someone’s position is misrepresented it is a simple mistake. Once it becomes a pattern it points to something deeper. In this case a conflict between logical reasoning and (in this case extremely minor) social politics. These are two incompatible kinds of thought and it is always a mistake to discuss a question of what people ‘should do’ from a perspective of logical coherency. Well, unless you are masochistic.
(Note that this interpretation is giving the maximal benefit of the doubt. That is, not assuming that the people Phil is talking to actually lack comprehension skills.)
Overwhelmingly clear to you, perhaps. The context I had for his original claim was:
This to me strongly suggests that men are the default, and women are an aberrant case, with the implication that treating everyone the same means treating everyone like a man (since no one currently has a pink username).
Now, Alicorn could have worded her response better- it wasn’t clear she was saying “why not be nicer to everyone?”- and that could have cleared up some of the confusion much earlier.
Then… why did you use words like “misinterpretation” instead of “miscommunication”? Saying “oh, both people were unclear, it looks like we were talking past one another ” is far better than the approach you took. To me, your comment reads like defensiveness in response to an accusation of sexism, as well as dismissal by bringing up “social politics” in contrast to “logical reasoning.” (If you were to gender those two phrases, which would be which?)
They have different meanings, one applied and the difference mattered.
Not for the purpose of my statement. There could even be place for an additional message that the kind of behavior I described is antisocial, rude and highly undesirable. Sufficiently objectionable as to make all considerations of ‘bluntness’ trivial by comparison.
You ask that question as though it should provide some rhetorical support for a point you were making. It appears instead to be loosely related tangent. I meant precisely what I said about social politics and logic. It is a message that is helpful for people who encounter questions like the one Phil asked and seek genuine understanding of how such situations work.
Questions of “should” just aren’t about creating a coherent protocol of behavior. Sometimes a coherent protocol emerges and that is great but ultimately having situations in which you are ‘doomed if you do; doomed if you don’t’ a standard part of how social rules work. The trick to navigating them is to stop expecting reason to apply and start gaming them like everyone else.
Any comments on the context of his comment?
I feel this should be elaborated on, as I don’t want to misunderstand what you’re getting at here.
It is not overwhelmingly clear to me. It wasn’t overwhemlingly clear to Vaniver. I don’t think paulfchristiano found it overwhelmingly clear either (as he argued against my own post from the opposite direction, and he certainly comprehended my meaning much better than you seemed to do).
Then why would differentiating according to gender only modify Phil’s attitude towards women, rather towards both genders?
Why are you attacking my position but ignore the reasons I mentioned for having it?
No, I did not, I said clearly why it seemed to me he was doing it.
As long as we’re talking about our personal preferences, let me note that I don’t appreciate being told I “assumed” stuff, when I instead provided in detail the reasoning that led me to the conclusion.
You said that, not Phil.
Because you didn’t present any good reasons for having your position. Quite frankly and since you asked, I didn’t believe you intended your mention of ‘implication’ to be an argument that your caricature of Phil’s position was actually justified by the literal meaning because if so it was a terrible argument.
I assumed some semblance of good faith from the opening “I hope you didn’t”. As though you were at least acknowledging that you were reading something into his words that is at very best extremely ambiguous. I did not think it was rhetoric spin—because given the context it would have just made your comment worse.
We’re not communicating here.
I said to Phil “in the ancestor post you seem to imply that if you took gender into consideration, it would only be your behaviour towards women that would have to be altered (being nicer to them), not your behavior towards men.”
My comment meant precisely what it said. Phil spoke about a possible solution of female members’ names being colored pink so that he knows to be nicer at them. He didn’t speak about male member’s names being colored blue so that he knows to be rougher at them. That’s an obvious asymmetry which requires an explanation.
If you have an explanation, provide it. I provided one, and paulfchristiano provided one, but you just ignored the whole point and told me I’m assuming the most convenient negative explanation.
I treat people a certain way. Someone suggested that the way I treat people is not well-tolerated by women. I said, among other things, that treating women differently to accomodate them might not be appreciated by women. Alicorn suggested that (to paraphrase), men like to be treated with c=3 and women like to be treated with c=7, so I should treat everyone with c = something in-between 3 and 7.
I asked whether that should be weighted (by the number of men and women present, or the number of men and women desired, or not at all); but more importantly, replied that that is inconsistent: Either
There is no significant mean difference between the way men and women like to be treated, or
There is a difference, and therefore I should treat men with c=3 and women with c=7.
Saying there is a difference, and I can use my knowledge of that difference to compute c = (9x3 + 1x7)/10 = 3.4 (assuming LW is 90% male); but I can’t use my knowledge of that difference to treat men with c=3 and women with c=7, seems illogical. If the preferences of men are distributed normally around c=3, and the preferences of women are distributed normally around c=7, using gender as a factor in my model will result in lower error, no matter how great the variance in these distributions is.
I can imagine possible justifications for the c=3.4 approach; but I can’t imagine any justifications strong enough not just to rule out even considering the c(gender) approach for all applications, but also to impugn the morality of those who consider it.
I am harping on this because it is an error in reasoning that, in American intellectual society, is not only committed routinely, but is generally assumed to be morally superior to any rational approach.
Of course, the ideal is for each individual to find out c(individual) and use that.
People derive lots of negative utility from noticing that they are being treated differently according to gender. If you do so, you are unlikely to be able to keep that a secret. Therefore, you should treat both genders the same.
(Isn’t the mean a least-squares estimator?)
That might be a good reason, but IMHO not good enough to take the option off the table. Also, it seems to me the opposite may be more true: People like being treated in ways that indicate they are successfully conforming to gender stereotypes. Boys and men like being given the signal that they are masculine; girls and women, that they are feminine.
D’oh! Yes. Removed my comment.
This is true for some stereotypes but not for others. In addition, people don’t want to feel that you are treating them differently because of their gender, even if they’d feel good if you treated them differently because you noticed their conformance to stereotypes. People will probably be able to tell what you are doing.
That was my first impression too and nearly commented as much. However the grandparent does serve as an indicator that the charitable interpretation of “[Alicorn has] a different idea of what “the topic at hand is” is the correct one.
The answer is like 3, but I don’t think you would understand if I explained (based on priors derived from how little understanding-of-me-when-I-say-stuff you have exhibited in this thread so far). I suppose I could explain for onlookers’ benefit, but I don’t want to; this conversation has left a bad taste in my mouth. I will exit it now.