If you read my comment, you would have seen that I explicitly assume that we are not under-represented among deaf or gay people.
I smell a whiff of that weird American memplex [...] you know the one that for example uses the word minority to describe women.
If less than 4% of us are women, I am quite willing to call that a minority. Would you prefer me to call them an excluded group?
but God for starters isn’t among them
I specifically brought up atheists as a group that we should expect to over-represent. I’m also not hunting for equal-representation among countries, since education obviously ought to make a difference.
There are some differences in aptitude, psychology and interests that ensure that compsci and mathematics, at least at the higher levels will remain disproportionately male
That seems like it ought to get many more boos around here than mentioning the western world as the source of the scientific method. I ascribe differences in those to cultural influences; I don’t claim that aptitude isn’t a factor, but I don’t believe it has been or can easily be measured given the large cultural factors we have.
age
This also doesn’t bother me, for reasons similar to yours. As a friend of mine says, “we’ll get gay rights by outliving the homophobes”.
why do you only bemoan the under-representation of groups everyone else does?
Which groups should I pay more attention to? This is a serious question, since I haven’t thought too much about it. I neglect non-neurotypicals because they are overrepresented in my field, so I tend to expect them amongst similar groups.
I wasn’t actually intending to bemoan anything with my initial question, I was just curious. I was also shocked when I found out that this is dramatically less diverse than I thought, and less than any other large group I’ve felt a sort of membership in, but I don’t feel like it needs to be demonized for that. I certainly wasn’t trying to do that.
I ascribe differences in those to cultural influences;I don’t claim that aptitude isn’t a factor, but I don’t believe it has been or can easily be measured given the large cultural factors we have.
But if we can’t measure the cultural factors and account for them why presume a blank slate approach? Especially since there is sexual dimorphism in the very nervous and endocrine system.
I think you got stuck on the aptitude, to elaborate, I’m pretty sure considering that humans aren’t a very sexually dimorphous species (there are near relatives that are less however, example: Gibons), the mean g (if such a thing exists) of both men and women is probably about the same. There are however other aspects of succeeding at compsci or math than general intelligence.
Assuming that men and women carrying the exactly the same mems will respond on average identically to identical situations is a extraordinary claim. I’m struggling to come up with a evolutionary model that would square this with what is known (for example the greater historical reproductive success of the average woman vs. the average man that we can read from the distribution of genes). If I was presented with empirical evidence then this would be just too bad for the models, but in the absence of meaningful measurement (by your account), why not assign greater probability to the outcome proscribed by the same models that work so well when tested by other empirical claims?
I would venture to state that this case is especially strong for preferences.
And if you are trying to fine tune the situations and memes that both men and women for each gender so as to to balance this, where can one demonstrate that this isn’t a step away rather than toward improving pareto efficiency? And if its not, why proceed with it?
Also to admit a personal bias I just aesthetically prefer equal treatment whenever pragmatic concerns don’t trump it.
But if we can’t measure the cultural factors and account for them
We can’t directly measure them, but we can get an idea of how large they are and how they work.
For example, the gender difference in empathic abilities. While women will score higher on empathy on self report tests, the difference is much smaller on direct tests of ability, and often nonexistent on tests of ability where it isn’t stated to the participant that it’s empathy being tested. And then there’s the motivation of seeming empathetic. One of the best empathy tests I’ve read about is Ickes’, which worked like this: two participants meet together in the room and have a brief conversation, which is taped. Then they go into separate rooms and the tape is played back to them twice. The first time, they jot down the times at which they remember feeling various emotions. The second time, they jot down the times at which they think their partner is feeling an emotion, and what it is. Then the records are compared, and each participant receives an accuracy score. When the test is run is like this, there is no difference in ability between men and women. However, a difference emerges when another factor is added: each participant is asked to write a “confidence level” for each prediction they make. In that procedure, women score better, presumably because their desire to appear empathetic (write down higher confidence levels) causes them to put more effort into the task. But where do desires to appear a certain way come from? At least partly from cultural factors that dictate how each gender is supposed to appear. This is probably the same reason why women are overconfident in self reporting their empathic abilities relative to men.
The same applies to math. Among women and men with the same math ability as scored on tests, women will rate their own abilities much lower than the men do. Since people do what they think they’ll be good at, this will likely affect how much time these people spend on math in future, and the future abilities they acquire.
And then there’s priming. Asian American women do better on math tests when primed with their race (by filling in a “race” bubble at the top of the test) than when primed with their gender (by filling in a “sex” bubble). More subtly, priming affects people’s implicit attitudes towards gender-stereotyped domains too. People are often primed about their gender in real life, each time affecting their actions a little, which over time will add up to significant differences in the paths they choose in life in addition to that which is caused by innate gender differences. Right now we don’t have enough information to say how much is caused by each, but I don’t see why we can’t make more headway into this in the future.
But if we can’t measure the cultural factors and account for them
We can’t directly measure them, but we can get an idea of how large they are and how they work.
For example, the gender difference in empathic abilities. While women will score higher on empathy on self report tests, the difference is much smaller on direct tests of ability, and nonexistent on tests of ability where it isn’t stated to the participant that it’s empathy being tested. And then there’s the motivation of seeming empathetic. One of the http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2000.tb00006.x/abstract is Ickes’, which worked like this: two participants meet together in the room and have a brief conversation, which is taped. Then they go into separate rooms and the tape is played back to them twice. The first time, they jot down the times at which they remember feeling various emotions. The second time, they jot down the times at which they think their partner is feeling an emotion, and what it is. Then the records are compared, and each participant receives an accuracy score. When the test is run is like this, there is no difference in ability between men and women. However, a difference emerges when another factor is added: each participant is asked to write a “confidence level” for each prediction they make. In that procedure, women score better, presumably because the their desire to appear empathetic causes them to put more effort into the task. But where do desires to appear a certain way come from? At least partly from cultural factors that dictate how each gender is supposed to appear. This is probably the same reason why women are overconfident in their empathy abilities relative to men.
The same applies to math. Among women and men with the same math ability as scored on tests, women will rate their own abilities much lower than the men do. Since people do what they think they’ll be good at, this will likely affect how much time these people spend on math in future, and the future abilities they acquire.
And then there’s priming. Asian American women do better on math tests when primed with their race (by filling in a “race” bubble at the top of the test) than when primed with their gender (by filling in a “sex” bubble). More subtly, priming affects people’s implicit http://ase.tufts.edu/psychology/ambady/pubs/2006Steele.pdf towards gender-stereotyped domains too. People are often primed about their gender in real life, each time affecting their actions a little, which over time will add up in significant differences in the paths they choose in life in addition to that which is caused by innate gender differences.
I neglect non-neurotypicals because they are overrepresented in my field, so I tend to expect them amongst similar groups.
How do you know non-neurotypicals aren’t over or under represented on Lesswrong as compared to the groups that you claim are overrepresented on Lesswrong compared to your field the same way you know that the groups you bemoan are lacking are under-represented relative to your field?
Is it just because being neurotypical is harder to measure and define? I concede measuring who is a woman or a man or who is considered black and who is considered asian is for the average case easier than being neurotpyical. But when it comes to definition those concepts seem to be in the same order of magnitude of fuzzy as being neurotypical (sex is a less, race is a bit more).
Also previously you established you don’t want to compare Less wrongs diversity to the entire population of the world. I’m going to tentatively go that you also accept that academic background will affect if people can grasp or are interested in learning certain key concepts needed to participate.
My question now is, why don’t we crunch the numbers instead of people yelling “too many!”, “too few!” or “just right!”? We know from which countries and in what numbers visitors come from, we know the educational distributions in most of them. And we know how large a fraction of this group is proficient enough English to participate meaningfully on Less wrong.
This is ignoring the fact that the only data we have on sex or race is a simple self reported poll and our general impression.
But if we crunch the numbers and the probability densities end up looking pretty similar from the best data we can find, well why is the burden of proof that we are indeed wasting potential on Lesswrong and not the one proposing policy or action to improve our odds of progressing towards becoming more rational? And if we are promoting our member’s values, even when they aren’t neutral or positive towards reaching our objectives why don’t we spell them out as long as they truly are common! I’m certainly there are a few, perhaps the value of life and existence (thought these have been questioned and debated here too) or perhaps some utilitarian principles.
But how do we know any position people take would really reflect their values and wouldn’t jut be status signalling? Heck many people who profess their values include or don’t include a certain inherent “goodness” to existence probably do for signalling reasons and would quickly change their minds in a different situation!
Not even mentioning the general effect of the mindkiller.
But like I have stated before, there are certainly many spaces where we can optimize the stated goal by outreach. This is why I think this debate should continue but with a slightly different spirit. More in line with, to paraphrase you:
Which groups should we pay more attention to? This is a serious question, since we haven’t thought too much about it.
If less than 4% of us are women, I am quite willing to call that a minority. Would you >prefer me to call them an excluded group
I’m talking about the Western memplex whose members employ uses the word minority when describing women in general society. Even thought they represent a clear numerical majority.
I was suspicious that you used the word minority in that sense rather than the more clearly defined sense of being a numerical minority.
Sometimes when talking about groups we can avoid discussing which meaning of the word we are employing.
Example: Discussing the repression of the Mayan minority in Mexico.
While other times we can’t do this.
Example: Discussing the history and current relationship between the Arab upper class minority and slavery in Mauritania.
This (age) also doesn’t bother me, for reasons similar to yours.
Ah, apologies I see I carried it over from here:
How diverse is Less Wrong? I am under the impression that we disproportionately >consist of 20-35 year old white males, more disproportionately on some axes than >on others.
You explicitly state later that you are particularly interested in this axis of diversity
However, if we are predominately white males, why are we?
Perhaps this would be more manageable if looked at each of the axis of variability that you raise talk about it independently in as much as this is possible? Again, this is why I previously got me confused by speaking of “groups we usually consider adding diversity”, are there certain groups that are inherently associated with the word diversity? Are we using the word diversity to mean something like “proportionate representation of certain kinds of people in all groups” or are we using the world diversity in line with infinite diversity in Infinite combinations where if you create a mix of 1 part people A and 4 parts people B and have them coexist and cooperate with another one that is 2 part people A and 3 parts people B, where previously all groups where of the first kind, creating a kind of metadiversity (by using the word diversity in its politically charged meaning)?
I specifically brought up atheists as a group that we should expect to over-represent. I’m also not hunting for equal-representation among countries, since education obviously ought to make a difference.
Then why aren you hunting for equal representation on LW between different groups united in a space as arbitrary as one defined by borders?
mentioning the western world as the source of the scientific method.
While many important components of the modern scientific method did originate among scholars in Persian and Iraq in the medieval era, its development over the past 700 years has been disproportionately seen in Europe and later its colonies. I would argue its adoption was a part of the reason for the later (lets say last 300 years) technological superiority of the West.
Edit: I wrote up quite a long wall of text. I’m just going to split it into a few posts as to make it more readable as well as give me a better sense of what is getting up or downvoted based on its merit or lack of there of.
That seems like it ought to get many more boos around here than mentioning the western world as the source of the scientific method. I ascribe differences in those to cultural influences;
Given new evidence from the ongoing discussion I retract my earlier concession. I have the impression that the bottom line preceded the reasoning.
I expected your statement to get more boos for the same reason that you expected my premise in the other discussion to be assumed because of moral rather than evidence-based reasons. That is, I am used to other members of your species (I very much like that phrasing) to take very strong and sudden positions condemning suggestions of inherent inequality between the sexes, regardless of having a rational basis. I was not trying to boo your statement myself.
That said, I feel like I have legitimate reasons to oppose suggestions that women are inherently weaker in mathematics and related fields. I mentioned one immediately below the passage you quoted. If you insist on supporting that view, I ask that you start doing so by citing evidence, and then we can begin the debate from there. At minimum, I feel like if you are claiming women to be inherently inferior, the burden of proof lies with you.
Mathematical ability is most remarked on at the far right of the bell curve. It is very possible (and there’s lots of evidence to support the argument) that women simply have lower variance in mathematical ability. The average is the same. Whether or not ‘lower variance’ implies ‘inherently weaker’ is another argument, but it’s a silly one.
I’m much too lazy to cite the data, but a quick Duck Duck Go search or maybe Google Scholar search could probably find it. An overview with good references is here.
My own anecdotal experience has been that women are rare in elite math environments, but don’t perform worse than the men. That would be consistent with a fat-tailed rather than normal distribution, and also with higher computed variance among women.
Also anecdotal, but it seems that when people come from an education system that privileges math (like Europe or Asia as opposed to the US) the proportion of women who pursue math is higher. In other words, when you can get as much social status by being a poly sci major as a math major, women tend not to do math, but when math is very clearly ranked as the “top” or “most competitive” option throughout most of your educational life, women are much more likely to pursue it.
I have no idea; sorry, saying so was bad epistemic hygiene. I thought I’d heard something like that but people often say bell curve when they mean any sort of bell-like distribution.
Also anecdotal, but it seems that when people come from an education system that privileges math (like Europe or Asia as opposed to the US) the proportion of women who pursue math is higher.
I’m left confused as to how to update on this information… I don’t know how large such an effect is, nor what the original literature on gender difference says, which means that I don’t really know what I’m talking about, and that’s not a good place to be. I’ll make sure to do more research before making such claims in the future.
I’m not claiming that there aren’t systematic differences in position or shape of the distribution of ability. What I’m claiming is that no one has sufficiently proved that these differences are inherent.
I can think of a few plausible non-genetic influences that could reduce variance, but even if none of those come into play, there must be others that are also possibilities. Do you see why I’m placing the burden of proof on you to show that differences are biologically inherent, but also why I believe that this is such a difficult task?
Do you see why I’m placing the burden of proof on you to show that differences are biologically inherent
Either because you don’t understand how bayesian evidence works or because you think the question is social political rather than epistemic.
It might have been marginally more productive to answer “No, I don’t see. Would you explain?” But, rather than attempting to other-optimize, I will simply present that request to datadataeverywhere. Why is the placement of “burden” important? With this supplementary question: Do you know of evidence strongly suggesting that different cultural norms might significantly alter the predominant position of the male sex in academic mathematics?
… but also why I believe that this is such a difficult task?
I can certainly see this as a difficult task. For example, we can imagine that fictional rational::Harry Potter and Hermione were both taught as children that it is ok to be smart, but that only Hermione was instructed not to be obnoxiously smart. This dynamic, by itself, would be enough to strongly suppress the numbers of women to rise to the highest levels in math.
But producing convincing evidence in this area is not an impossible task. For example, we can empirically assess the impact of the above mechanism by comparing the number of bright and very bright men and women who come from different cultural backgrounds.
Rather than simply demanding that your interlocutor show his evidence first, why not go ahead and show yours?
But producing convincing evidence in this area is not an impossible task. For example, we can empirically assess the impact of the above mechanism by comparing the number of bright and very bright men and women who come from different cultural backgrounds.
I agree, and this was what I meant. Distinguishing between nature and nurture, as wedrifid put it, is a difficult but not impossible task.
Why is the placement of “burden” important? With this supplementary question: Do you know of evidence strongly suggesting that different cultural norms might significantly alter the predominant position of the male sex in academic mathematics?
I hope I answered both of these in my comment to wedrifid below. Thank you for bothering to take my question at face value (as a question that requests a response), instead of deciding to answer it with a pointless insult.
It might have been marginally more productive to answer “No, I don’t see. Would you explain?”
The problem with other-optimising here is that it doesn’t account for my goals. I care far more about the nature of rational evidence than I do about the drawn out nature vs nurture debates. A direct denunciation of the epistemic rational failure mode of passing the ‘proof’ buck suits my purposes.
It might have been marginally more productive to answer “No, I don’t see. Would you explain?”
Actually, it would have been more productive, since you obviously didn’t understand what I was saying.
I am not claiming that I have evidence suggesting that culture is a stronger factor in mathematical ability than genetics. What I’m claiming is that I don’t know of any evidence to show that the two can be clearly distinguished. Ignorance is a privileged hypothesis. Unless you can show evidence of differences in mathematical ability that can be traced specifically to genetics, ignorance reigns here, and we shouldn’t assume that either culture or genetics is a stronger factor.
The burden of proof lies on you, because you are appealing to me to shift my belief toward yours. I am willing to do this, provided you provide any evidence that does so under a sane framework for reasoning. Meanwhile, the reason the burden of proof is not on me is that I am claiming ignorance, not a particular position.
A direct denunciation of the epistemic rational failure mode of passing the ‘proof’ buck suits my purposes.
You’re being incredibly critical, and have been so in other threads as well. I realize that this is your M.O., and is not solely directed at me, but I would appreciate it if you would specify exactly what I’ve said, here or in other comments, that has convinced you so thoroughly that I am unable to hold a rational discussion.
Actually, it would have been more productive, since you obviously didn’t understand what I was saying.
No, I rejected your specific argument because it was by very nature fallacious. There are other things you could have said but didn’t and those things I may not have even disagreed with.
The burden of proof lies on you, because you are appealing to me to shift my belief toward yours.
The conversation was initiated by you admonishing others. You have since then danced the dance of re-framing with some skill. I was actually only at the fringes of the conversation.
A direct denunciation of the epistemic rational failure mode of passing the ‘proof’ buck suits my purposes.
but I would appreciate it if you would specify exactly what I’ve said, here or in other comments, that has convinced you so thoroughly that I am unable to hold a rational discussion.
I haven’t said that. Specifics quotations of arguments or reasoning that I reject tend to be included in my comments. Take the above for example. Your reply does not relate rationally to the quote you were replying to. I reject the argument that you were using (which is something I do consistently—I care about bullshit probably even more than you care about supporting your culture hypothesis). Your response was to weasel your way out of your argument, twist your initial claim such that it has the intellectual high ground, label my disagreement with you a personal flaw, misrepresented my claim to be something that I have not made and then attempt to convey that I have not given any explanation for my position. That covers modules 1, 2, 3 and 4 in “Effective Argument Techniques 101”.
I don’t especially mind the slander but it is essentially futile for me to try to engage with the reasoning. I would have to play the kind of games that I come here to avoid.
Was that the Joan of Arc reference? I’ve been studying these sexual related genetic mutations and chromosomal abnormalities recently in a Biology class and her name came up. I found it fascinating and nearly left the comment there just for that. Each to their own. :)
Maybe it was the Joan comment. I can’t find it now.
That Joan comment annoyed me too, though I didn’t say anything at the time. Not your fault, but just let a woman do something remarkable, something almost miraculous, and sure enough, some man 500 years later is going to claim that she must have actually been male, genetically speaking.
I wasn’t feminist at all until I came here to LW. Honest!
That Joan comment annoyed me too, though I didn’t say anything at the time. Not your fault, but just let a woman do something remarkable, something almost miraculous, and sure enough, some man 500 years later is going to claim that she must have actually been male, genetically speaking.
She is a woman, regardless of whether she has a Y chromosome. It is SRY gene that matters genetically. So we can use that observation to free us up to call evidence evidence without committing crimes against womankind.
If I my (most decidedly female) lecturer is to be believed the speculation was based primarily on personal reports from her closest friends. It included things like menstrual patterns (and the lack thereof) and personal habits. I didn’t look into the details to see whether or not the this was an allusion to the typically far shorter vagina becoming relevant. I’m also not sure if the line of reasoning was prompted by some historian trying to work out what on earth was going on while researching her personal life or just biologists liking to feel like their knowledge is relevant to impressive people and events.
If she hadn’t done famous things then we probably wouldn’t have any records whatsoever to go on and nor would anyone care to look.
You’re starting to sound like a troll. I would feel less sure of that if you hadn’t just admitted that you don’t expect to care what you’re arguing about in another comment.
What do you want out of this discussion? Personally, I would like to be better informed about an area that smart people disagree with me on. You’re not helping me attain that goal, since you are providing me with no evidence. Meanwhile, you are continuing to hold a hostile tone and expecting me to support positions I neither hold nor claim to hold.
If you have an actual interest in either the topic of this discussion or working with me to fix whatever it is that has sent up so many red flags with you, I’d appreciate it. I don’t feel like I’m guilty of any of the things you mentioned, but if you feel adamantly that I am, I’m happy to listen to specifics so that I can evaluate and fix that behavior. If instead you feel merely like insulting me, I urge you to make better use of your time.
You’re starting to sound like a troll. I would feel less sure of that if you hadn’t just admitted that you don’t expect to care what you’re arguing about in another comment.
It is my policy to remove comments whenever social aggressors find them to be useful to take out of context and have done so with the subject of your link, assuring Resgui that it was nothing to do with him.
In that discussion Relsqui and I came to an amicable agreement to disagree. He (if he’ll pardon the assumption of gender and chastise me if I have made an incorrect inference) had already made some hints in that direction in the ancestor and acknowledging that I too didn’t think such a trivial matter of word definition was really worth arguing about is a gesture of respect. (Some people find it annoying if the other person leaves them hanging, especially if they had offered to extend the discussion mostly as a gesture of goodwill, which is what I had taken from Relsqui.)
I’ll note that whatever you may think of me personally a distinguishing feature of trolls is that they enjoy provoking an emotional response in others while on the other hand I find it unsavoury. Even though I have actively developed myself in order to have a thicker ‘emotional skin’ (see related concurrent discussion) with when it comes to frustrations this sort of conflict will always be a net psychological drain.
My goal was to support Will’s comment in the face of a reply that I would have found frustrating and was also an error in reasoning. In the future I will reply directly to Will (or whomever), expressing agreement and elaborating on the point with more details. Replying to the undesired comment gave more attention to it rather than less and obscuration would perhaps have been more useful than rebuttal.
a distinguishing feature of trolls is that they enjoy provoking an emotional response in others while on the other hand I find it unsavoury
For what it’s worth, it is very hard to distinguish between someone who is deliberately provoking a negative reaction and someone who is not very practiced at anticipating what choices of language or behavior might cause one. I, like datadataeverywhere, did get the impression that you were at least one of those things; off the top of my head, here are a few specific reasons:
Your initial comment disagreed with my terminology without actually addressing it directly, merely asserting that I was wrong without providing evidence nor argument. This struck me as aggressive and also poorly reasoned.
You persisted in the argument about definition despite, as you later said, not caring about it. I did not continue that thread out of goodwill but out of a desire to resolve the disagreement and return to the original topic—hence stopping and checking in that we were on the same page. That’s why it annoyed me when you said you didn’t care; in that case, I wish we hadn’t wasted the time on it!
Applying the label “social aggressor” in response to someone who is explicitly trying to find out what’s going on in the conversation and steer it somewhere useful. (In fairness, dde suggesting you’re a troll was not necessary either, but the situations are different in that I have not noticed you specifically trying to get the conversation on track.)
Not answering direct questions, especially when they are designed to return the conversation to a productive topic.
I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds by spelling this out; my impression of the LW community is that constructive criticism is encouraged. Therefore, I’m giving you specific suggestions to avoid making a negative impression you seem to not want to make. Conveniently, this will also resolve the ambiguity in my first (non-quoted) sentence in this comment. If you confirm that you want to avoid garnering negative reactions in conversation, it’ll be clear that you are indeed not a troll.
Absolutely not. In general people overestimate the importance of ‘intrinsic talent’ on anything. The primary heritable component of success in just about anything is motivation. Either g or height comes second depending on the field.
I agree. I think it is quite obvious that ability is always somewhat heritable (otherwise we could raise our pets as humans), but this effect is usually minimal enough to not be evident behind the screen of either random or environmental differences. I think this applies to motivation as well!
And that was really what my claim was; anyone who claims that women are inherently less able in mathematics has to prove that any measurable effect is distinguishable from and not caused by cultural factors that propel fewer women to have interest in mathematics.
Am I misunderstanding, or are you claiming that motivation is purely an inherited trait? I can’t possibly agree with that, and I think even simple experiments are enough to disprove that claim.
Am I misunderstanding, or are you claiming that motivation is purely an inherited trait?
Misunderstanding. Expanding the context slightly:
I agree. I think it is quite obvious that ability is always somewhat heritable (otherwise we could raise our pets as humans), but this effect is usually minimal enough to not be evident behind the screen of either random or environmental differences. I think this applies to motivation as well!
It doesn’t. (Unfortunately.)
When it comes to motivation the differences between people are not trivial. When it comes the particular instance of difference between the sexes there are powerful differences in motivating influences. Most human motives are related to sexual signalling and gaining social status. The optimal actions to achieve these goals is significantly different for males and females, which is reflected in which things are the most motivating. It most definitely should not be assumed that motivational differences are purely cultural—and it would be astonishing if they were.
The optimal actions to achieve these goals is significantly different for males and females.
Are you speaking from an evolutionary context, i.e. claiming that what we understand to be optimal is hardwired, or are you speaking to which actions are actually perceived as optimal in our world?
You make a really good point—one I hadn’t thought of but agree with—but since I don’t think that we behave strictly in a manner that our ancestors would consider optimal (after all, what are we doing at this site?), I can’t agree that sexual and social signaling’s effect on motivation can be considered a-cultural.
If you read my comment, you would have seen that I explicitly assume that we are not under-represented among deaf or gay people.
If less than 4% of us are women, I am quite willing to call that a minority. Would you prefer me to call them an excluded group?
I specifically brought up atheists as a group that we should expect to over-represent. I’m also not hunting for equal-representation among countries, since education obviously ought to make a difference.
That seems like it ought to get many more boos around here than mentioning the western world as the source of the scientific method. I ascribe differences in those to cultural influences; I don’t claim that aptitude isn’t a factor, but I don’t believe it has been or can easily be measured given the large cultural factors we have.
This also doesn’t bother me, for reasons similar to yours. As a friend of mine says, “we’ll get gay rights by outliving the homophobes”.
Which groups should I pay more attention to? This is a serious question, since I haven’t thought too much about it. I neglect non-neurotypicals because they are overrepresented in my field, so I tend to expect them amongst similar groups.
I wasn’t actually intending to bemoan anything with my initial question, I was just curious. I was also shocked when I found out that this is dramatically less diverse than I thought, and less than any other large group I’ve felt a sort of membership in, but I don’t feel like it needs to be demonized for that. I certainly wasn’t trying to do that.
But if we can’t measure the cultural factors and account for them why presume a blank slate approach? Especially since there is sexual dimorphism in the very nervous and endocrine system.
I think you got stuck on the aptitude, to elaborate, I’m pretty sure considering that humans aren’t a very sexually dimorphous species (there are near relatives that are less however, example: Gibons), the mean g (if such a thing exists) of both men and women is probably about the same. There are however other aspects of succeeding at compsci or math than general intelligence.
Assuming that men and women carrying the exactly the same mems will respond on average identically to identical situations is a extraordinary claim. I’m struggling to come up with a evolutionary model that would square this with what is known (for example the greater historical reproductive success of the average woman vs. the average man that we can read from the distribution of genes). If I was presented with empirical evidence then this would be just too bad for the models, but in the absence of meaningful measurement (by your account), why not assign greater probability to the outcome proscribed by the same models that work so well when tested by other empirical claims?
I would venture to state that this case is especially strong for preferences.
And if you are trying to fine tune the situations and memes that both men and women for each gender so as to to balance this, where can one demonstrate that this isn’t a step away rather than toward improving pareto efficiency? And if its not, why proceed with it?
Also to admit a personal bias I just aesthetically prefer equal treatment whenever pragmatic concerns don’t trump it.
We can’t directly measure them, but we can get an idea of how large they are and how they work.
For example, the gender difference in empathic abilities. While women will score higher on empathy on self report tests, the difference is much smaller on direct tests of ability, and often nonexistent on tests of ability where it isn’t stated to the participant that it’s empathy being tested. And then there’s the motivation of seeming empathetic. One of the best empathy tests I’ve read about is Ickes’, which worked like this: two participants meet together in the room and have a brief conversation, which is taped. Then they go into separate rooms and the tape is played back to them twice. The first time, they jot down the times at which they remember feeling various emotions. The second time, they jot down the times at which they think their partner is feeling an emotion, and what it is. Then the records are compared, and each participant receives an accuracy score. When the test is run is like this, there is no difference in ability between men and women. However, a difference emerges when another factor is added: each participant is asked to write a “confidence level” for each prediction they make. In that procedure, women score better, presumably because their desire to appear empathetic (write down higher confidence levels) causes them to put more effort into the task. But where do desires to appear a certain way come from? At least partly from cultural factors that dictate how each gender is supposed to appear. This is probably the same reason why women are overconfident in self reporting their empathic abilities relative to men.
The same applies to math. Among women and men with the same math ability as scored on tests, women will rate their own abilities much lower than the men do. Since people do what they think they’ll be good at, this will likely affect how much time these people spend on math in future, and the future abilities they acquire.
And then there’s priming. Asian American women do better on math tests when primed with their race (by filling in a “race” bubble at the top of the test) than when primed with their gender (by filling in a “sex” bubble). More subtly, priming affects people’s implicit attitudes towards gender-stereotyped domains too. People are often primed about their gender in real life, each time affecting their actions a little, which over time will add up to significant differences in the paths they choose in life in addition to that which is caused by innate gender differences. Right now we don’t have enough information to say how much is caused by each, but I don’t see why we can’t make more headway into this in the future.
We can’t directly measure them, but we can get an idea of how large they are and how they work.
For example, the gender difference in empathic abilities. While women will score higher on empathy on self report tests, the difference is much smaller on direct tests of ability, and nonexistent on tests of ability where it isn’t stated to the participant that it’s empathy being tested. And then there’s the motivation of seeming empathetic. One of the http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2000.tb00006.x/abstract is Ickes’, which worked like this: two participants meet together in the room and have a brief conversation, which is taped. Then they go into separate rooms and the tape is played back to them twice. The first time, they jot down the times at which they remember feeling various emotions. The second time, they jot down the times at which they think their partner is feeling an emotion, and what it is. Then the records are compared, and each participant receives an accuracy score. When the test is run is like this, there is no difference in ability between men and women. However, a difference emerges when another factor is added: each participant is asked to write a “confidence level” for each prediction they make. In that procedure, women score better, presumably because the their desire to appear empathetic causes them to put more effort into the task. But where do desires to appear a certain way come from? At least partly from cultural factors that dictate how each gender is supposed to appear. This is probably the same reason why women are overconfident in their empathy abilities relative to men.
The same applies to math. Among women and men with the same math ability as scored on tests, women will rate their own abilities much lower than the men do. Since people do what they think they’ll be good at, this will likely affect how much time these people spend on math in future, and the future abilities they acquire.
And then there’s priming. Asian American women do better on math tests when primed with their race (by filling in a “race” bubble at the top of the test) than when primed with their gender (by filling in a “sex” bubble). More subtly, priming affects people’s implicit http://ase.tufts.edu/psychology/ambady/pubs/2006Steele.pdf towards gender-stereotyped domains too. People are often primed about their gender in real life, each time affecting their actions a little, which over time will add up in significant differences in the paths they choose in life in addition to that which is caused by innate gender differences.
How do you know non-neurotypicals aren’t over or under represented on Lesswrong as compared to the groups that you claim are overrepresented on Lesswrong compared to your field the same way you know that the groups you bemoan are lacking are under-represented relative to your field?
Is it just because being neurotypical is harder to measure and define? I concede measuring who is a woman or a man or who is considered black and who is considered asian is for the average case easier than being neurotpyical. But when it comes to definition those concepts seem to be in the same order of magnitude of fuzzy as being neurotypical (sex is a less, race is a bit more).
Also previously you established you don’t want to compare Less wrongs diversity to the entire population of the world. I’m going to tentatively go that you also accept that academic background will affect if people can grasp or are interested in learning certain key concepts needed to participate.
My question now is, why don’t we crunch the numbers instead of people yelling “too many!”, “too few!” or “just right!”? We know from which countries and in what numbers visitors come from, we know the educational distributions in most of them. And we know how large a fraction of this group is proficient enough English to participate meaningfully on Less wrong.
This is ignoring the fact that the only data we have on sex or race is a simple self reported poll and our general impression.
But if we crunch the numbers and the probability densities end up looking pretty similar from the best data we can find, well why is the burden of proof that we are indeed wasting potential on Lesswrong and not the one proposing policy or action to improve our odds of progressing towards becoming more rational? And if we are promoting our member’s values, even when they aren’t neutral or positive towards reaching our objectives why don’t we spell them out as long as they truly are common! I’m certainly there are a few, perhaps the value of life and existence (thought these have been questioned and debated here too) or perhaps some utilitarian principles.
But how do we know any position people take would really reflect their values and wouldn’t jut be status signalling? Heck many people who profess their values include or don’t include a certain inherent “goodness” to existence probably do for signalling reasons and would quickly change their minds in a different situation!
Not even mentioning the general effect of the mindkiller.
But like I have stated before, there are certainly many spaces where we can optimize the stated goal by outreach. This is why I think this debate should continue but with a slightly different spirit. More in line with, to paraphrase you:
Typo in a link?
I changed the first draft midway when I was still attempting to abbreviate it. I’ve edited and reformulated the sentence, it should make sense now.
I’m talking about the Western memplex whose members employ uses the word minority when describing women in general society. Even thought they represent a clear numerical majority.
I was suspicious that you used the word minority in that sense rather than the more clearly defined sense of being a numerical minority.
Sometimes when talking about groups we can avoid discussing which meaning of the word we are employing.
Example: Discussing the repression of the Mayan minority in Mexico.
While other times we can’t do this.
Example: Discussing the history and current relationship between the Arab upper class minority and slavery in Mauritania.
Ah, apologies I see I carried it over from here:
You explicitly state later that you are particularly interested in this axis of diversity
Perhaps this would be more manageable if looked at each of the axis of variability that you raise talk about it independently in as much as this is possible? Again, this is why I previously got me confused by speaking of “groups we usually consider adding diversity”, are there certain groups that are inherently associated with the word diversity? Are we using the word diversity to mean something like “proportionate representation of certain kinds of people in all groups” or are we using the world diversity in line with infinite diversity in Infinite combinations where if you create a mix of 1 part people A and 4 parts people B and have them coexist and cooperate with another one that is 2 part people A and 3 parts people B, where previously all groups where of the first kind, creating a kind of metadiversity (by using the word diversity in its politically charged meaning)?
Then why aren you hunting for equal representation on LW between different groups united in a space as arbitrary as one defined by borders?
While many important components of the modern scientific method did originate among scholars in Persian and Iraq in the medieval era, its development over the past 700 years has been disproportionately seen in Europe and later its colonies. I would argue its adoption was a part of the reason for the later (lets say last 300 years) technological superiority of the West.
Edit: I wrote up quite a long wall of text. I’m just going to split it into a few posts as to make it more readable as well as give me a better sense of what is getting up or downvoted based on its merit or lack of there of.
Given new evidence from the ongoing discussion I retract my earlier concession. I have the impression that the bottom line preceded the reasoning.
I expected your statement to get more boos for the same reason that you expected my premise in the other discussion to be assumed because of moral rather than evidence-based reasons. That is, I am used to other members of your species (I very much like that phrasing) to take very strong and sudden positions condemning suggestions of inherent inequality between the sexes, regardless of having a rational basis. I was not trying to boo your statement myself.
That said, I feel like I have legitimate reasons to oppose suggestions that women are inherently weaker in mathematics and related fields. I mentioned one immediately below the passage you quoted. If you insist on supporting that view, I ask that you start doing so by citing evidence, and then we can begin the debate from there. At minimum, I feel like if you are claiming women to be inherently inferior, the burden of proof lies with you.
Edit: fixed typo
Mathematical ability is most remarked on at the far right of the bell curve. It is very possible (and there’s lots of evidence to support the argument) that women simply have lower variance in mathematical ability. The average is the same. Whether or not ‘lower variance’ implies ‘inherently weaker’ is another argument, but it’s a silly one.
I’m much too lazy to cite the data, but a quick Duck Duck Go search or maybe Google Scholar search could probably find it. An overview with good references is here.
Is mathematical ability a bell curve?
My own anecdotal experience has been that women are rare in elite math environments, but don’t perform worse than the men. That would be consistent with a fat-tailed rather than normal distribution, and also with higher computed variance among women.
Also anecdotal, but it seems that when people come from an education system that privileges math (like Europe or Asia as opposed to the US) the proportion of women who pursue math is higher. In other words, when you can get as much social status by being a poly sci major as a math major, women tend not to do math, but when math is very clearly ranked as the “top” or “most competitive” option throughout most of your educational life, women are much more likely to pursue it.
I have no idea; sorry, saying so was bad epistemic hygiene. I thought I’d heard something like that but people often say bell curve when they mean any sort of bell-like distribution.
I’m left confused as to how to update on this information… I don’t know how large such an effect is, nor what the original literature on gender difference says, which means that I don’t really know what I’m talking about, and that’s not a good place to be. I’ll make sure to do more research before making such claims in the future.
I’m not claiming that there aren’t systematic differences in position or shape of the distribution of ability. What I’m claiming is that no one has sufficiently proved that these differences are inherent.
I can think of a few plausible non-genetic influences that could reduce variance, but even if none of those come into play, there must be others that are also possibilities. Do you see why I’m placing the burden of proof on you to show that differences are biologically inherent, but also why I believe that this is such a difficult task?
Either because you don’t understand how bayesian evidence works or because you think the question is social political rather than epistemic.
That was the point of making the demand.
You cannot change reality by declaring that other people have ‘burdens of proof’. “Everything is cultural” is not a privileged hypothesis.
It might have been marginally more productive to answer “No, I don’t see. Would you explain?” But, rather than attempting to other-optimize, I will simply present that request to datadataeverywhere. Why is the placement of “burden” important? With this supplementary question: Do you know of evidence strongly suggesting that different cultural norms might significantly alter the predominant position of the male sex in academic mathematics?
I can certainly see this as a difficult task. For example, we can imagine that fictional rational::Harry Potter and Hermione were both taught as children that it is ok to be smart, but that only Hermione was instructed not to be obnoxiously smart. This dynamic, by itself, would be enough to strongly suppress the numbers of women to rise to the highest levels in math.
But producing convincing evidence in this area is not an impossible task. For example, we can empirically assess the impact of the above mechanism by comparing the number of bright and very bright men and women who come from different cultural backgrounds.
Rather than simply demanding that your interlocutor show his evidence first, why not go ahead and show yours?
I agree, and this was what I meant. Distinguishing between nature and nurture, as wedrifid put it, is a difficult but not impossible task.
I hope I answered both of these in my comment to wedrifid below. Thank you for bothering to take my question at face value (as a question that requests a response), instead of deciding to answer it with a pointless insult.
The problem with other-optimising here is that it doesn’t account for my goals. I care far more about the nature of rational evidence than I do about the drawn out nature vs nurture debates. A direct denunciation of the epistemic rational failure mode of passing the ‘proof’ buck suits my purposes.
Actually, it would have been more productive, since you obviously didn’t understand what I was saying.
I am not claiming that I have evidence suggesting that culture is a stronger factor in mathematical ability than genetics. What I’m claiming is that I don’t know of any evidence to show that the two can be clearly distinguished. Ignorance is a privileged hypothesis. Unless you can show evidence of differences in mathematical ability that can be traced specifically to genetics, ignorance reigns here, and we shouldn’t assume that either culture or genetics is a stronger factor.
The burden of proof lies on you, because you are appealing to me to shift my belief toward yours. I am willing to do this, provided you provide any evidence that does so under a sane framework for reasoning. Meanwhile, the reason the burden of proof is not on me is that I am claiming ignorance, not a particular position.
You’re being incredibly critical, and have been so in other threads as well. I realize that this is your M.O., and is not solely directed at me, but I would appreciate it if you would specify exactly what I’ve said, here or in other comments, that has convinced you so thoroughly that I am unable to hold a rational discussion.
No, I rejected your specific argument because it was by very nature fallacious. There are other things you could have said but didn’t and those things I may not have even disagreed with.
The conversation was initiated by you admonishing others. You have since then danced the dance of re-framing with some skill. I was actually only at the fringes of the conversation.
I haven’t said that. Specifics quotations of arguments or reasoning that I reject tend to be included in my comments. Take the above for example. Your reply does not relate rationally to the quote you were replying to. I reject the argument that you were using (which is something I do consistently—I care about bullshit probably even more than you care about supporting your culture hypothesis). Your response was to weasel your way out of your argument, twist your initial claim such that it has the intellectual high ground, label my disagreement with you a personal flaw, misrepresented my claim to be something that I have not made and then attempt to convey that I have not given any explanation for my position. That covers modules 1, 2, 3 and 4 in “Effective Argument Techniques 101”.
I don’t especially mind the slander but it is essentially futile for me to try to engage with the reasoning. I would have to play the kind of games that I come here to avoid.
Well, I had promised you a compliment when you deleted a post.
So, well done! I’m glad you got rid of that turkey (the great-grandparent).
Was that the Joan of Arc reference? I’ve been studying these sexual related genetic mutations and chromosomal abnormalities recently in a Biology class and her name came up. I found it fascinating and nearly left the comment there just for that. Each to their own. :)
Maybe it was the Joan comment. I can’t find it now.
That Joan comment annoyed me too, though I didn’t say anything at the time. Not your fault, but just let a woman do something remarkable, something almost miraculous, and sure enough, some man 500 years later is going to claim that she must have actually been male, genetically speaking.
I wasn’t feminist at all until I came here to LW. Honest!
She is a woman, regardless of whether she has a Y chromosome. It is SRY gene that matters genetically. So we can use that observation to free us up to call evidence evidence without committing crimes against womankind.
If I my (most decidedly female) lecturer is to be believed the speculation was based primarily on personal reports from her closest friends. It included things like menstrual patterns (and the lack thereof) and personal habits. I didn’t look into the details to see whether or not the this was an allusion to the typically far shorter vagina becoming relevant. I’m also not sure if the line of reasoning was prompted by some historian trying to work out what on earth was going on while researching her personal life or just biologists liking to feel like their knowledge is relevant to impressive people and events.
If she hadn’t done famous things then we probably wouldn’t have any records whatsoever to go on and nor would anyone care to look.
You’re starting to sound like a troll. I would feel less sure of that if you hadn’t just admitted that you don’t expect to care what you’re arguing about in another comment.
What do you want out of this discussion? Personally, I would like to be better informed about an area that smart people disagree with me on. You’re not helping me attain that goal, since you are providing me with no evidence. Meanwhile, you are continuing to hold a hostile tone and expecting me to support positions I neither hold nor claim to hold.
If you have an actual interest in either the topic of this discussion or working with me to fix whatever it is that has sent up so many red flags with you, I’d appreciate it. I don’t feel like I’m guilty of any of the things you mentioned, but if you feel adamantly that I am, I’m happy to listen to specifics so that I can evaluate and fix that behavior. If instead you feel merely like insulting me, I urge you to make better use of your time.
It is my policy to remove comments whenever social aggressors find them to be useful to take out of context and have done so with the subject of your link, assuring Resgui that it was nothing to do with him.
In that discussion Relsqui and I came to an amicable agreement to disagree. He (if he’ll pardon the assumption of gender and chastise me if I have made an incorrect inference) had already made some hints in that direction in the ancestor and acknowledging that I too didn’t think such a trivial matter of word definition was really worth arguing about is a gesture of respect. (Some people find it annoying if the other person leaves them hanging, especially if they had offered to extend the discussion mostly as a gesture of goodwill, which is what I had taken from Relsqui.)
I’ll note that whatever you may think of me personally a distinguishing feature of trolls is that they enjoy provoking an emotional response in others while on the other hand I find it unsavoury. Even though I have actively developed myself in order to have a thicker ‘emotional skin’ (see related concurrent discussion) with when it comes to frustrations this sort of conflict will always be a net psychological drain.
My goal was to support Will’s comment in the face of a reply that I would have found frustrating and was also an error in reasoning. In the future I will reply directly to Will (or whomever), expressing agreement and elaborating on the point with more details. Replying to the undesired comment gave more attention to it rather than less and obscuration would perhaps have been more useful than rebuttal.
For what it’s worth, it is very hard to distinguish between someone who is deliberately provoking a negative reaction and someone who is not very practiced at anticipating what choices of language or behavior might cause one. I, like datadataeverywhere, did get the impression that you were at least one of those things; off the top of my head, here are a few specific reasons:
Your initial comment disagreed with my terminology without actually addressing it directly, merely asserting that I was wrong without providing evidence nor argument. This struck me as aggressive and also poorly reasoned.
You persisted in the argument about definition despite, as you later said, not caring about it. I did not continue that thread out of goodwill but out of a desire to resolve the disagreement and return to the original topic—hence stopping and checking in that we were on the same page. That’s why it annoyed me when you said you didn’t care; in that case, I wish we hadn’t wasted the time on it!
Applying the label “social aggressor” in response to someone who is explicitly trying to find out what’s going on in the conversation and steer it somewhere useful. (In fairness, dde suggesting you’re a troll was not necessary either, but the situations are different in that I have not noticed you specifically trying to get the conversation on track.)
Not answering direct questions, especially when they are designed to return the conversation to a productive topic.
I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds by spelling this out; my impression of the LW community is that constructive criticism is encouraged. Therefore, I’m giving you specific suggestions to avoid making a negative impression you seem to not want to make. Conveniently, this will also resolve the ambiguity in my first (non-quoted) sentence in this comment. If you confirm that you want to avoid garnering negative reactions in conversation, it’ll be clear that you are indeed not a troll.
Absolutely not. In general people overestimate the importance of ‘intrinsic talent’ on anything. The primary heritable component of success in just about anything is motivation. Either g or height comes second depending on the field.
I agree. I think it is quite obvious that ability is always somewhat heritable (otherwise we could raise our pets as humans), but this effect is usually minimal enough to not be evident behind the screen of either random or environmental differences. I think this applies to motivation as well!
And that was really what my claim was; anyone who claims that women are inherently less able in mathematics has to prove that any measurable effect is distinguishable from and not caused by cultural factors that propel fewer women to have interest in mathematics.
It doesn’t. (Unfortunately.)
Am I misunderstanding, or are you claiming that motivation is purely an inherited trait? I can’t possibly agree with that, and I think even simple experiments are enough to disprove that claim.
Misunderstanding. Expanding the context slightly:
It doesn’t. (Unfortunately.)
When it comes to motivation the differences between people are not trivial. When it comes the particular instance of difference between the sexes there are powerful differences in motivating influences. Most human motives are related to sexual signalling and gaining social status. The optimal actions to achieve these goals is significantly different for males and females, which is reflected in which things are the most motivating. It most definitely should not be assumed that motivational differences are purely cultural—and it would be astonishing if they were.
Are you speaking from an evolutionary context, i.e. claiming that what we understand to be optimal is hardwired, or are you speaking to which actions are actually perceived as optimal in our world?
You make a really good point—one I hadn’t thought of but agree with—but since I don’t think that we behave strictly in a manner that our ancestors would consider optimal (after all, what are we doing at this site?), I can’t agree that sexual and social signaling’s effect on motivation can be considered a-cultural.