The unbalanced gender ratio in the atheist/skeptic/rationalist spheres (and the science/programming spheres, more generally) has negative effects on both genders. Women may feel objectified and marginalized, while men may feel romantically frustrated and hopeless. These reactions can lead to mutually defeating behavior. Typical responses—for women, abandoning those spheres; for men, acting inappropriately toward women—only widen the gender divide and make the problems worse.
I am interested in working toward better outcomes for both genders. My question for the women of LW is this: what specific advice do you have, for either gender, that you think will improve the situation? How confident are you that your advice will be helpful, and on what evidence do you base that confidence?
For women: you have a great deal of control over how other people react to you. You can take some responsibility for how you are perceived.
personal anecdote: I’m a female maths undergrad, and most of my social circle is male. First term there I concentrated on making friends, so I adopted casual, unisex clothing styles. I attracted male attention only when I dressed in a stereotypically girly way for fancy dress parties and social events.
Second term I was on a mate hunt, so I overhhauled my wardrobe and started wearing skirts and behaving in a mate-attracting way. According to my now OH, that’s when he “realised I was a girl”.
So basically if you don’t want men to view you as a potential mate, it’s helpful to not act like one. Think hoodies and ill-fitting jeans. And if you have got attracting mates in the back of your mind, and your body language shows it, then you shouldn’t be surprised if men notice you.
Second piece of advice for women where it applies: tracking your menstrual cycle is the easiest first step towards luminosity. Different hormones induce different kinds of bias, and also prompt changes in body language and attitude, which may cause people to react differently. The effects can then be harnessed or corrected for.
Another problem that I can see is that if I dress in attractive clothes and start dating someone, they might not want me to start dressing in unflattering clothes after we start dating (esp if looking like a girl is part of what attracted them to me). I either have to disappoint my new partner and wear baggy clothes, or to continue wearing flattering clothes and continue to deal with guys perceiving me as available.
ETA: I tend to go for guys who have a sense of style (not always, but often) and I’d be disappointed it they started wearing baggy jeans and hoodies because “now I have a girlfriend I don’t have to make an effort.”
There are other ways of deflecting male attention. If you’re at a social event alone, instead of signaling ‘I am not a potential mate’, you could signal ‘I am in a monogamous relationship and my boyfriend is higher status than you’. It’s a bit harder, and I’m still working on it, but certainly possible.
Erm, there are obvious ways of doing it. I tend to just drop my boyfriend into conversation as often as it is appropriate, and make sure I mention him in contexts such as “oh he’s really good at such-and-such”.
Okay, that seems obvious now that you’ve mentioned it. I started to try to think of all these abstract things, and I could only think of maybe showing off jewelry that was supposed to imply you’re in a relationship. I was thinking about more subtle things, and I couldn’t really think of anything, so I was wondering if maybe I was just missing something.
So what? Some dating-but-not-married-nor-engaged couples wear such jewellery too. EDIT: and if you forgo the ″is higher-status than you″ part (which for certain values of ″status″ would mean you come off as a gold-digger) you don’t even need it to be very expensive, and even a picture of the two of you kissing as the wallpaper on your mobile phone would suffice. (If they know you know they know you have a boyfriend—even if he’s not higher-status than them—and they hit on you anyway, they lose plausible deniability all the same.) EDIT 2: On reading chaosmosis again, I realize it’s a male and he’s asking about how to find out if a woman has a boyfriend. If so, the answer is ″You ask them.″
I tend to prefer to wear flattering clothes, whether looking for a partner or not, because they make me feel more comfortable/confident. It’s possible to wear clothes that are flattering, but not sexy, I think. Maybe I need to work on this more.
It depends on what you mean by flattering. If you want to emphasise a feminine figure, then that’s always going to be sexy I’m afraid, so you’ll probably want a different approach for deflecting male attention. You can, however, get well-fitted jackets, shirts etc in good materials that don’t cinch in at the waist, and trousers cut straight to deemphasise the rear if you merely wanted good quality clothes. Look for the androgynous style fashions from the last couple of years.
It’s possible to wear clothes that are flattering, but not sexy, I think.
For a female? No, it really is not. But just in case I misunderstand what you mean, care to tell the difference between flattering and sexy? Or link to a couple of pictures of each type and we can let the males here provide feedback on whether what you consider simply flattering is also sexy.
One classic example of flattering but not sexy is coloration that suits you—if you have fair skin, blue-green eyes and salt and pepper hair, a light grey and sage green jacket is going to be flattering, but can range freely from not sexy to sexy.
I’m not confident of it—I’d like it to be possible! I think workwear (suits etc) is probably the closest thing to it, but even that’s often made quite sexy.
doesn’t involve me having to wear uncomfortable and unflattering clothes
Comfortable is easy, comfortable but flattering is harder, comfortable, flattering but not sexy is harder still. Also, I suspect that when women say “comfortable”, they often mean something other than what straight guys mean by the same term. For example, many women would say that wearing basic sweats and a hoodie in public is uncomfortable.
Sorry, I meant “clothes that I feel uncomfortable in,” not “clothes that are physically uncomfortable.” I would feel uncomfortable/less confident in sweats and a hoodie. I appreciate it was the wrong choice of words.
This strategy makes a lot of sense, but I wonder whether it’s applicable to professional settings. Jeans and a hoodie don’t just signal nongirliness; they also signal casualness. Does anyone know of equivalently gender-neutral clothes that are appropriate for formal settings? Or is it unnecessary because the formality prevents people from making unwanted advances anyway?
I don’t have much experience of professional settings, but from my knowledge of women’s clothing: you can get tailored shirts in fairly male cuts and straight-leg trousers or long skirts that don’t hug the figure. I’d imagine one would be received differently for wearing a very modest shirt and trousers combo vs a v-neck blouse and pencil skirt.
In most places, I think it’s now acceptable for women to wear a tuxedo for black tie, if you go to that kind of thing and feel that cocktail dresses attract too much attention. Alternatively, keep a modest dress in your wardrobe.
It’s worth mentioning that even in quite progressive circles, women in traditionally male-style suits tends to cross into that transgressive genderfuck aesthetic. There are a small but significant number of men and women who are really into that, and as a result I imagine this plan would backfire quite badly.
Right, ok. The question is then if these people are sufficiently less common and/or less annoying than men who give unwanted attention to feminine women to make it a worthwhile plan for avoiding attention nonetheless. The exist many situations where there are a significant number of people who react in a way that might be considered undesirable to feminine women.
Also, if breaking out of gendered roles is a big problem in some workplaces, there are ways to dress very modestly while still looking feminine.
I’m not suggesting the general idea of dressing gender-neutral isn’t a good one; I am largely un-knowledgeable on the subject and can’t really comment on that aspect of it. But a woman wearing a suit in a cut traditionally for men carries connotations a naive wearer may not be aware of.
It’s a bit like wearing a collar. It has a specific meaning in BDSM subculture, and signals membership to that group. Someone naively wearing a collar is going to get a lot of unwanted attention at a social gathering. Wearing a suit isn’t quite that specific, and doesn’t belong to a specific subculture, but if your goal is to not have people come up to you and start talking about sex, it’s going to fail in a whole bunch of ways.
Ah right, I see what you’re saying there. I have loose women’s jeans and I have men’s jeans and agree that the implications are rather different.
In this instance I was intending to convey the “modest, but nevertheless womens” trouser suit, as exemplied in theselinks, rather than “a suit that looks like a mens suit”.
What prompted me to respond was the “tuxedo for black tie” comment. For business-formal, there’s obviously a variety of tasteful and subdued options. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as gender-neutral evening wear.
Oh! Ok, fair enough, that makes even more sense. Though I think that’s much less of an issue now than it would have been 5 years ago, because ladies tuxedos have been incrediblytrendy for about 2 years now. I normally dress very feminine and I still have a couple in my wardrobe. Obviously most of the examples given are still styled in the “sexy” direction, but it’s easy to modify that into positive “stylish” but negative “sexy” (by, say, ditching the high heels and switching the short skirts and tight trousers for flowing skirts and palazzo trousers).
It would be like if collars suddenly became fashionable, and celebrities started to wear them to red carpet events all the time.
I’ve only ever seen one case of a man who’d previously had a rationalist mate going back to nonrationalist mates afterward. The reason why the gender skew of our culture is a mating problem for men is that once you go rationalist you don’t go back.
“Go to the physics department, find a woman you consider attractive, point her at HPMOR, and see if anything develops” sounds like more useful advice to me.
For (straight) men who insist on dating externally, asking a woman whether she would prefer a certainty of $500 or a 15% chance at $1 million seems likely to be a surprisingly good filter on potential mates. I didn’t believe it either as first, but I’ve verified that many women, and in at least one case a female grad-student doing advanced math homework, says she would rather have the $500; while every woman I’ve tested inside our community—regardless of her math/science/economics level or her ability to talk glibly about explicit rationality—takes the 15% chance at $1M with a puzzled look and ‘Is this a trick question?’
I’ve only ever seen one case of a man who’d previously had a rationalist mate going back to nonrationalist mates afterward.
I have dated rationalists and gone back. Rationalist subculture affiliations count very little to me. It doesn’t make people all that rational and does make people more annoying when they are, in fact, being irrational. I do enjoy having some shared interests with those I date but honestly I’d assign more ‘attraction’ points for a fitness obsession, enjoyment of games (board games, cards) or, say, medical knowledge than “being a rationalist”.
The reason why the gender skew of our culture is a mating problem for men is that once you go rationalist you don’t go back.
That sounds like an argument that one shouldn’t date a rationalist even when an attractive option is willing and available. You don’t want to permanently degrade your future options for (possibly) short term pleasure with what is immediately before you.
“Go to the physics department, find a woman you consider attractive, point her at HPMOR, and see if anything develops” sounds like more useful advice to me.
If you say so yourself!
I don’t know, if a woman had tried that with me she’d have found I didn’t make it through to the end (didn’t read the last batch after the pause before it). And she’d find that I argue with the author, rejecting some of the “rationalist” morals he promotes in the chapters that get preachy. If she is too enarmored of the work it could disqualify me!
For (straight) men who insist on dating externally, asking a woman whether she would prefer a certainty of $500 or a 15% chance at $1 million seems likely to be a surprisingly good filter on potential mates.
If I happen to marry (or otherwise have significant resource sharing with) a woman who is poor at this kind of decision making I’ll first make sure she is willing to let me have final say on critical financial decisions. (Irrational and stubborn or egotistic about it is what would black-ball her.)
I think this is a useful distinction. I care much more about “habitually rational” than “subculture affiliation,” when it comes to social interactions.
Would it be useful to distinguish between rationalist subculture affiliation and habitually rational?
Probably. In this case it is the subculture affiliation that matters—given the context of considering what strategies to use in response to the gender imbalance therein.
I think a statement more likely than “once you go rational you can’t go back” is “once you go luminous you can’t go back”. I think my OH has expressed something along the lines of it just being too much effort when he considers dating someone who can’t just tell him if they are having system 1 issues.
Should rational men take into account when considering very long term relationships with women that the women are likely to remain physically and mentally healthy longer than the men are, with the effect being amplified if the woman is younger than the man? If that factor is considered, then independent good sense is very valuable.
To make it more specific, it’s highly likely that in a very long term heterosexual relationship, the woman will be wrangling medical personnel for the man. Of course, it’s also pretty likely that at some point, the man will wrangling medical personnel for the woman, just not as likely.
I hate to No-True-Scotswoman you but I can’t help but wonder exactly how rational she was—the cases I know have all been drawn from either East Coast or West Coast whole communities with corresponding personal transmission of skills.
I hate to No-True-Scotswoman you but I can’t help but wonder exactly how rational she was—the cases I know have all been drawn from either East Coast or West Coast whole communities with corresponding personal transmission of skills.
Enough that by my best estimate based on what exposure to and information that I have about those communities she could easily soar to high levels of status within either (take that either way). Probably collecting an arbitrary sized harem in a matter of weeks.
Rationalist skills are impressive and sometimes convenient for lovers to have but again, I’d be just as impressed with and drawn to an interested prospective mate with Taekwondo or Jujutsu skills who was willing to spar with me. I’m reasonably aware of what I look for in a companion and a lover and that which is required to be respected as a rationalist just doesn’t happen to be near the top of the list.
I actually suspect there is an element of in group bias at play here—the same bias I see in my Christian friends and relatives who tell each other how much superior other Christians are as friends and romantic interests.
I actually suspect there is an element of in group bias at play here—the same bias I see in my Christian friends and relatives who tell each other how much superior other Christians are as friends and romantic interests.
I’ve noticed a pretty strong in-group bias in myself WRT Less Wrong.
For (straight) men who insist on dating externally, asking a woman whether she would prefer a certainty of $500 or a 15% chance at $1 million seems likely to be a surprisingly good filter on potential mates. I didn’t believe it either as first, but I’ve verified that many women, and in at least one case a female grad-student doing advanced math homework, says she would rather have the $500; while every woman I’ve tested inside our community—regardless of her math/science/economics level or her ability to talk glibly about explicit rationality—takes the 15% chance at $1M with a puzzled look and ‘Is this a trick question?’
I have a (male) friend who answered $500 to this question. He teaches math (at the middle school level). It was a sad day.
Of course it’s not just women! Women (outside the community, that is) are more likely to respond that way than men, but that’s from a study on both risk aversion and hyperbolic discounting which showed that “Women can’t take small risks and men are creatures of the now”, with both effects diminishing as scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test increased.
I now wonder what would happen if I asked a man on the street to choose between $500 immediately or $1 million in 10 years (= 113% annual interest) - a version that extreme wasn’t in the original study, just the extreme version of the risk-aversion Q. I wouldn’t expect it to work, but then I wouldn’t have expected it to work with risk aversion either!
Yes. EY’s introduction of “immediately” is what changes the equation for me.… I might well choose $500 in my hand right now over the promise of $1million in ten years, whereas I probably would not choose the promise of $500 in an hour over the promise of $1 million in ten years.
Would you also choose $1 million in ten years over $1000 in an hour?
Probably.
And would you choose $1000 in an hour over $500 right now?
Ooh. That’s a toughie.
I suspect in practice it depends critically on all kinds of subliminal aspects of the situation… that is, which way I choose can probably be manipulated by the exact choice of words, what the person is wearing, yadda yadda. My guess is that I choose $500 right now for most versions of the choice, but $1000 for a substantial minority.
Single point of evidence- I would have to fight my inner self REALLY hard to choose the 15% chance at a million. (Inner turmoil!! Logic says Do Thing A, but I really Don’t Want To!!).
OTOH, the million in ten years is intuitively obvious to me and choosing it would be what I would’ve done even PRE-rationality.
Yep, though it’s weaker evidence to observe that (straight) female rationalists don’t go back when they can have their pick of mates and/or an entire harem by staying.
Actually, I have seen a couple of cases of women using their newly acquired Sanity Attractiveness Points(*) to pull in hot guys they want from outside the community, though in both such cases they still had rationalist mates on the side.
(*) = According to the one woman whose case I know in detail, this is apparently a pretty strong effect—a female from within rationalist culture, dealing with a guy from outside rationalist culture who has an unmet need for sanity, may appear unto him as a Goddess. Sort of the dating equivalent of what happens when people with unmet needs discover LW or read HPMOR.
I wonder what effect rationalist culture has on the attractiveness of guys who date outside the community. Are they more or less appealing than non-rationalist guys?
to pull in hot guys they want from outside the community, though in both such cases they still had rationalist mates on the side.
Now that is a strategy I can endorse.
According to the one woman whose case I know in detail, this is apparently a pretty strong effect—a female from within rationalist culture, dealing with a guy from outside rationalist culture who has an unmet need for sanity, may appear unto him as a Goddess.
Ah, yes. I completely agree, and should clarify what I personally mean by “rationalist”. I care less whether they are (already) a part of the community, especially considering that the community in this city consists solely of people that were brought into it either by Jesse or myself.
Those “guy(s) from outside rationalist culture who has an unmet need for sanity, [she] may appear unto him as a Goddess.”—Yeah, that’s true, and I just consider them to be “Rationalists Who Don’t Know It Yet.”
That depends a lot on the nature of the lottery. If it was a typical lottery that for some reason had a 15% chance to win, a $500 ticket would not be worth it as all, since thousands of people would win and split the prize amongst themselves and the expected value would be much less than you would assume at first glance.
If it’s just “spend $500 for a 15% chance of gaining a million,” though, I’d take as many tickets as I could get!
I might actually not want to buy one. (When no loss is involved I take the chance at a million.) I might want to buy five, or go in together with several friends on one.
What if I gave you $500, then asked you if you wanted to spend it on the ticket?
I’d also like to know whether some unexpected expense, like needing a $500 dental crown, would change your mind about accepting the free $500 instead of the free ticket.
If you gave me $500 and then immediately alerted me to the availability of a ticket you’d probably catch me before the $500 entered the “my money” mental bin, because I’d still be a little confused about why you randomly handed me $500 and expect to have to give it back.
Risks of medium-sized unexpected expenses like that are already factored into how conservative I am about handling money on this scale, so I don’t think that would have an effect.
“Go to the physics department, find a woman you consider attractive, point her at HPMOR, and see if anything develops” sounds like more useful advice to me.
While I understand the sentiment, the physics department will not usually have a significantly higher volume of women than the local rationalist/etc. group.
I actually dislike the focus on pulling in people from physics/computer programming/math. As Dreaded_Anomaly mentions, these are fields which have just as bad of a gender ratio as here. As long as we continue focusing on those fields, I don’t think the gender ratio problem is going to get much better.
Also, I don’t think there’s anything inherent in rationality that means that it requires physics/programming/math types. But I think our current community is generally set up in a way to self-perpetuate that.
I can understand that STEMM types might more frequently lean towards rationality, which is why recruiting from there is often a suggestion. (If you have a .5 probability that a random intelligent STEMM person would be amenable to rationality, but only a .2 probability that a random intelligent person of another field would be, for example.)
A way to get around that: Personally, I’ve found that anyone I have a match of >94% on OKC has a high probability of being the aforementioned Rationalists Who Just Don’t Know It Yet. I myself was “recruited” this way. Dated someone from OKC (We no longer date, but are still REALLY good friends) who I was a 99% match with, and they pointed me toward HPMoR, then LW, etc, all while modeling “proper rationalist behavior” in our discussions. I think that’s all that it takes, often, to get someone interested in rationality (once you filter for interest, whether you use okc for this or not)
Agree that the OKCupid technique probably works too. But I wasn’t suggesting that we put up broad recruiting posters in the math department to solve the gender ratio thingy; I was suggesting that rationalist men seeking convertible mates try to date mathematical women. As Lucas observes, our community is still small enough that this provides a relatively large pool.
Good point! I understand what you are getting at. So long as it is also understood that mathematical does not necessarily equate to rational, and that rational does not require a person to be mathematical, etc.
A way to get around that: Personally, I’ve found that anyone I have a match of >94% on OKC has a high probability of being the aforementioned Rationalists Who Just Don’t Know It Yet.
Really? Back when I first joined I wouldn’t have been surprised by this, but they’ve fiddled around with the match algorithms since then, and 94% matches have gone from extremely rare compatibility to fairly trivial (and yes, I’ve checked against people whose match values I knew from before the algorithm changes to make sure it’s not just a result of a larger userbase.) These days, I could browse through a considerable number of people with that match rating before finding anyone I would expect to relate to.
On an individual level, this will work fine for a few people. It makes a difference, though, if everyone tries that specific strategy. The strategy will lose its effectiveness quickly, and the overall effect on the gender divide will not be very large.
Trying to bring more women into the relevant spheres is clearly a big part of the answer. However, simply moving women from one low-density area to another doesn’t seem very productive to me.
It is true that you receive dimishing marginal returns whenever you try to import people. Even if we were to use the largest available population sink, eventually we’d run into limits. The larger the population sinks you use, the less it has been filtered, so while your returns diminish more slowly, the effort required at the outset is larger.
Given the small size of our group, physics departments are more than large enough population sinks for the forseeable future.
I think, perhaps LWers being unpleasant about women who aren’t conventionally attractive probably puts some women off LW. Unattractive women can be smart too!
ETA: To be clear, I think it’s fine to only want to date highly attractive women, but I think nastiness about those who aren’t is offputting.
Mine takes the 15% chance. She does not grok even very simple ‘formal systems’ though: she flunked bookkeeping in high school and once asked me how much .5 is, guessing that it meant one fifth.
If you really need the $500, why throw that away for a one-off, low odds chance for more? The first $500 almost certainly has greater marginal utility than the second, and possibly more than the next 1,999 put together. And that’s assuming the offer is totally legit, which is not very rational.
first $500 almost certainly has greater marginal utility than the second, and possibly more than the next 1,999 put together.
Sure, if they’re to starve (or freeze to death) within the month if not for this money, then certainly: accepting the bet would then become a 85% chance of death vs a 15% chance at a million. And rejecting a 85% chance of death is reasonable, even in the face of a 15% chance at a million.
But relatively very few of the people offered the choice would really be so much in need. There’s no point in finding ways to excuse simple irrationality by bringing in extreme scenarios that would justify it in some implausible cases....
Simple irrationality would be taking the implausible scenario both seriously and at face value. A priori, the likelihood of someone honestly offering you money for nothing is extremely low, as is the likelihood that they even have a million dollars to give away. If you don’t take the scenario seriously, it’s just a case of guessing the teacher’s password. If you do take it seriously, it would not be rational in most contexts take the offer at face value, in which case “$500 now” has about as a good an expected pay-off as any, and at least provides guaranteed evidence of the offer’s legitimacy.
At this point you’re just using pedantry to dismiss the very concept of hypothetical questions. The question is simple: What option you would take with the mentioned choices at hand as a given situation: Whether you’d prefer the certainty of 500 dollars or a 15% chance at 1 million.
As simple as that. You really don’t have to estimate how unlikely you’re to be given this option in reality. That’s why it’s called a “hypothetical” question.
And the question is likewise not about what you would do if you were in danger of starving to death. Just what you would do. You’re free to offer a conditional response (e.g. “I’d choose the 15% chance at a million, except if I was dead broke and in danger of immediate starvation), but just claiming that all possible responses are equally valid, regardless of conditions, just won’t fly.
If you’re going to tap out, fair enough, but don’t do it after a three paragraph response. That’s just a chickenshit way of trying to have the last word.
I am a girl and I approve of this suggestion. I’ll also note that LW has been very good about this in all of my experiences here (discussion forum, IRC, and meetups IRL).
And yet for all your interest and your polyhacking I suspect that you and those like you just don’t have sufficient time or sexual and romantic interest to satisfy the demand. (My apologies if I have underestimated your enthusiasm and endurance!) This inflates your value and means at a grossly simplified level that for a given level of attractiveness a male that doesn’t qualify to date you within this culture may attract women outside the subculture as attractive to you. Those that do qualify to date you could expect general population dating opportunities with women who are even sexier than you, or better at sport or who perhaps have neck-down alopecia.
I’m sure you’ll not be lacking for available, interested males. Unless all the males started looking elsewhere and didn’t notice that the incentives at the margin had changed. They’d also have to resist any overt advances you should happen to make!
Also, the bisexual one I see sometimes would not be deterred by considering me male for all social purposes.
Of course bisexual males also have more potential romantic interests, not being limited to the scarce female population. Perhaps that means this ‘avoid scarcity’ principle doesn’t even need special case treatment for bisexual males. Homosexual males on the other hand may get all confused if they try to implement it!
I have evidence-based insight into the gender ratio issue. Although it is not a solution, I think it will help everyone understand the problem better.
I have some unpleasant news which is related to IQ (and LessWrong has a higher than average IQ according to the member surveys). There’s something up with genetics and intelligence that goes like this (references included): Although men’s and women’s IQs are the same on average, there are far more gifted men than women. The explanation is that high intelligence is due to a mutation. Men are more affected by mutations. Therefore they are about twice as likely to get both beneficial and detrimental intelligence mutations, which is why they are unbalanced for gifted populations but even out in population averages. “Diseases inherited in an X-linked recessive pattern mostly affect males, because a second X chromosome usually protects females from showing symptoms.” (From: How Are Genetic Disorders Inherited?) See also: Mensa’s demographics page where they report a 33% female : 66% male ratio (for the top 2% in IQ).
I’ve heard it reported by people with very high IQs that the higher the IQ range, the worse the gap is. This may be true if higher IQs require multiple mutations.
If refining rationality, science, etc. or the specific forms of these that interest LW members tend to appeal most to people with high IQs, this ratio is probably, unfortunately, going to affect groups like these whatever you do. Of course, if the male to female ratio is 2:1 in Mensa (unsure what their average IQ is, just that the minimum is the top 2%) this means there’s probably room for improvement. However, short of genetic engineering or brain implants, the gender ratio problem is likely to persist for high IQ groups like this even if a perfect strategy was used for making women feel more comfortable.
If the important thing is to be able to have children one day, then creating or using a service for finding intelligent women who are willing to have children for others would be one way.
Another idea might be encouraging women to work extra hard to refine their rational thinking skills, explaining that they’ll interest more intelligent men that way. As we know, women can be picky and they tend to have a preference for intelligence. If they know that smart guys are looking for rational women, some of them may devote attention to it the way that many women currently devote attention to hair and make-up. Not all women will be interested, and it won’t solve the incompatibilities that IQ differences cause, but it may help bridge gaps that aren’t too great and lead to there being more female rationalists.
I feel that addressing the “creepiness” issues could go a long way to get interested women interacting more. Nerdy men are definitely my type but I’m often put off by their behavior. I’d like to date more, but the behaviors I describe here are disheartening, so I’m not nearly as motivated as I could be. Understanding women better is a great first step. I’m glad to see that the guys are looking into what’s going on.
Unfortunately, I can’t provide you advice or evidence and don’t know that anybody can—I’m not aware of any projects or experiments to specifically try to increase the number of females in a male dominated social group.
Unfortunately, I can’t provide you advice or evidence and don’t know that anybody can—I’m not aware of any projects or experiments to specifically try to increase the number of females in a male dominated social group.
To clarify, I asked for evidence-based advice in order to avoid the useless platitudes that are usually offered in such situations. Bad advice is worse than no advice at all. I appreciate your honesty on the subject.
The unbalanced gender ratio in the atheist/skeptic/rationalist spheres (and the science/programming spheres, more generally) has negative effects on both genders. Women may feel objectified and marginalized, while men may feel romantically frustrated and hopeless. These reactions can lead to mutually defeating behavior. Typical responses—for women, abandoning those spheres; for men, acting inappropriately toward women—only widen the gender divide and make the problems worse.
I am interested in working toward better outcomes for both genders. My question for the women of LW is this: what specific advice do you have, for either gender, that you think will improve the situation? How confident are you that your advice will be helpful, and on what evidence do you base that confidence?
For women: you have a great deal of control over how other people react to you. You can take some responsibility for how you are perceived.
personal anecdote: I’m a female maths undergrad, and most of my social circle is male. First term there I concentrated on making friends, so I adopted casual, unisex clothing styles. I attracted male attention only when I dressed in a stereotypically girly way for fancy dress parties and social events.
Second term I was on a mate hunt, so I overhhauled my wardrobe and started wearing skirts and behaving in a mate-attracting way. According to my now OH, that’s when he “realised I was a girl”.
So basically if you don’t want men to view you as a potential mate, it’s helpful to not act like one. Think hoodies and ill-fitting jeans. And if you have got attracting mates in the back of your mind, and your body language shows it, then you shouldn’t be surprised if men notice you.
Second piece of advice for women where it applies: tracking your menstrual cycle is the easiest first step towards luminosity. Different hormones induce different kinds of bias, and also prompt changes in body language and attitude, which may cause people to react differently. The effects can then be harnessed or corrected for.
This is an overgeneralization. There are ways to improve the odds, but no guarantees.
Agreed and edited.
Another problem that I can see is that if I dress in attractive clothes and start dating someone, they might not want me to start dressing in unflattering clothes after we start dating (esp if looking like a girl is part of what attracted them to me). I either have to disappoint my new partner and wear baggy clothes, or to continue wearing flattering clothes and continue to deal with guys perceiving me as available.
ETA: I tend to go for guys who have a sense of style (not always, but often) and I’d be disappointed it they started wearing baggy jeans and hoodies because “now I have a girlfriend I don’t have to make an effort.”
There are other ways of deflecting male attention. If you’re at a social event alone, instead of signaling ‘I am not a potential mate’, you could signal ‘I am in a monogamous relationship and my boyfriend is higher status than you’. It’s a bit harder, and I’m still working on it, but certainly possible.
It’s more frustrating for the guys though.
I’m curious what would signal this. If I can’t interpret these kind of signals then I’m in trouble.
Erm, there are obvious ways of doing it. I tend to just drop my boyfriend into conversation as often as it is appropriate, and make sure I mention him in contexts such as “oh he’s really good at such-and-such”.
Okay, that seems obvious now that you’ve mentioned it. I started to try to think of all these abstract things, and I could only think of maybe showing off jewelry that was supposed to imply you’re in a relationship. I was thinking about more subtle things, and I couldn’t really think of anything, so I was wondering if maybe I was just missing something.
A very expensive ring on your left fourth finger/heart-shaped jewel hanging from your necklace/etc.?
boyfriend != husband
So what? Some dating-but-not-married-nor-engaged couples wear such jewellery too. EDIT: and if you forgo the ″is higher-status than you″ part (which for certain values of ″status″ would mean you come off as a gold-digger) you don’t even need it to be very expensive, and even a picture of the two of you kissing as the wallpaper on your mobile phone would suffice. (If they know you know they know you have a boyfriend—even if he’s not higher-status than them—and they hit on you anyway, they lose plausible deniability all the same.) EDIT 2: On reading chaosmosis again, I realize it’s a male and he’s asking about how to find out if a woman has a boyfriend. If so, the answer is ″You ask them.″
I tend to prefer to wear flattering clothes, whether looking for a partner or not, because they make me feel more comfortable/confident. It’s possible to wear clothes that are flattering, but not sexy, I think. Maybe I need to work on this more.
It depends on what you mean by flattering. If you want to emphasise a feminine figure, then that’s always going to be sexy I’m afraid, so you’ll probably want a different approach for deflecting male attention. You can, however, get well-fitted jackets, shirts etc in good materials that don’t cinch in at the waist, and trousers cut straight to deemphasise the rear if you merely wanted good quality clothes. Look for the androgynous style fashions from the last couple of years.
For a female? No, it really is not. But just in case I misunderstand what you mean, care to tell the difference between flattering and sexy? Or link to a couple of pictures of each type and we can let the males here provide feedback on whether what you consider simply flattering is also sexy.
One classic example of flattering but not sexy is coloration that suits you—if you have fair skin, blue-green eyes and salt and pepper hair, a light grey and sage green jacket is going to be flattering, but can range freely from not sexy to sexy.
Not sure of this. A large, colourful wool sweater can be flattering for certain women, but it’s not particularly sexy (in my eyes at least).
I’m not confident of it—I’d like it to be possible! I think workwear (suits etc) is probably the closest thing to it, but even that’s often made quite sexy.
I share your dreams of living in a should-universe :)
Mostly I’d like to have a solution that doesn’t involve me having to wear uncomfortable and unflattering clothes :)!
Comfortable is easy, comfortable but flattering is harder, comfortable, flattering but not sexy is harder still. Also, I suspect that when women say “comfortable”, they often mean something other than what straight guys mean by the same term. For example, many women would say that wearing basic sweats and a hoodie in public is uncomfortable.
Um, high heels?
Sorry, I meant “clothes that I feel uncomfortable in,” not “clothes that are physically uncomfortable.” I would feel uncomfortable/less confident in sweats and a hoodie. I appreciate it was the wrong choice of words.
This strategy makes a lot of sense, but I wonder whether it’s applicable to professional settings. Jeans and a hoodie don’t just signal nongirliness; they also signal casualness. Does anyone know of equivalently gender-neutral clothes that are appropriate for formal settings? Or is it unnecessary because the formality prevents people from making unwanted advances anyway?
I don’t have much experience of professional settings, but from my knowledge of women’s clothing: you can get tailored shirts in fairly male cuts and straight-leg trousers or long skirts that don’t hug the figure. I’d imagine one would be received differently for wearing a very modest shirt and trousers combo vs a v-neck blouse and pencil skirt.
In most places, I think it’s now acceptable for women to wear a tuxedo for black tie, if you go to that kind of thing and feel that cocktail dresses attract too much attention. Alternatively, keep a modest dress in your wardrobe.
It’s worth mentioning that even in quite progressive circles, women in traditionally male-style suits tends to cross into that transgressive genderfuck aesthetic. There are a small but significant number of men and women who are really into that, and as a result I imagine this plan would backfire quite badly.
Right, ok. The question is then if these people are sufficiently less common and/or less annoying than men who give unwanted attention to feminine women to make it a worthwhile plan for avoiding attention nonetheless. The exist many situations where there are a significant number of people who react in a way that might be considered undesirable to feminine women.
Also, if breaking out of gendered roles is a big problem in some workplaces, there are ways to dress very modestly while still looking feminine.
I’m not suggesting the general idea of dressing gender-neutral isn’t a good one; I am largely un-knowledgeable on the subject and can’t really comment on that aspect of it. But a woman wearing a suit in a cut traditionally for men carries connotations a naive wearer may not be aware of.
It’s a bit like wearing a collar. It has a specific meaning in BDSM subculture, and signals membership to that group. Someone naively wearing a collar is going to get a lot of unwanted attention at a social gathering. Wearing a suit isn’t quite that specific, and doesn’t belong to a specific subculture, but if your goal is to not have people come up to you and start talking about sex, it’s going to fail in a whole bunch of ways.
Ah right, I see what you’re saying there. I have loose women’s jeans and I have men’s jeans and agree that the implications are rather different.
In this instance I was intending to convey the “modest, but nevertheless womens” trouser suit, as exemplied in these links, rather than “a suit that looks like a mens suit”.
What prompted me to respond was the “tuxedo for black tie” comment. For business-formal, there’s obviously a variety of tasteful and subdued options. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as gender-neutral evening wear.
Oh! Ok, fair enough, that makes even more sense. Though I think that’s much less of an issue now than it would have been 5 years ago, because ladies tuxedos have been incredibly trendy for about 2 years now. I normally dress very feminine and I still have a couple in my wardrobe. Obviously most of the examples given are still styled in the “sexy” direction, but it’s easy to modify that into positive “stylish” but negative “sexy” (by, say, ditching the high heels and switching the short skirts and tight trousers for flowing skirts and palazzo trousers).
It would be like if collars suddenly became fashionable, and celebrities started to wear them to red carpet events all the time.
For men: Consider the women in the subculture “male for all social purposes” and seek romantic interests elsewhere.
I’ve only ever seen one case of a man who’d previously had a rationalist mate going back to nonrationalist mates afterward. The reason why the gender skew of our culture is a mating problem for men is that once you go rationalist you don’t go back.
“Go to the physics department, find a woman you consider attractive, point her at HPMOR, and see if anything develops” sounds like more useful advice to me.
For (straight) men who insist on dating externally, asking a woman whether she would prefer a certainty of $500 or a 15% chance at $1 million seems likely to be a surprisingly good filter on potential mates. I didn’t believe it either as first, but I’ve verified that many women, and in at least one case a female grad-student doing advanced math homework, says she would rather have the $500; while every woman I’ve tested inside our community—regardless of her math/science/economics level or her ability to talk glibly about explicit rationality—takes the 15% chance at $1M with a puzzled look and ‘Is this a trick question?’
I have dated rationalists and gone back. Rationalist subculture affiliations count very little to me. It doesn’t make people all that rational and does make people more annoying when they are, in fact, being irrational. I do enjoy having some shared interests with those I date but honestly I’d assign more ‘attraction’ points for a fitness obsession, enjoyment of games (board games, cards) or, say, medical knowledge than “being a rationalist”.
That sounds like an argument that one shouldn’t date a rationalist even when an attractive option is willing and available. You don’t want to permanently degrade your future options for (possibly) short term pleasure with what is immediately before you.
If you say so yourself!
I don’t know, if a woman had tried that with me she’d have found I didn’t make it through to the end (didn’t read the last batch after the pause before it). And she’d find that I argue with the author, rejecting some of the “rationalist” morals he promotes in the chapters that get preachy. If she is too enarmored of the work it could disqualify me!
If I happen to marry (or otherwise have significant resource sharing with) a woman who is poor at this kind of decision making I’ll first make sure she is willing to let me have final say on critical financial decisions. (Irrational and stubborn or egotistic about it is what would black-ball her.)
Would it be useful to distinguish between rationalist subculture affiliation and habitually rational?
I think this is a useful distinction. I care much more about “habitually rational” than “subculture affiliation,” when it comes to social interactions.
Probably. In this case it is the subculture affiliation that matters—given the context of considering what strategies to use in response to the gender imbalance therein.
I think a statement more likely than “once you go rational you can’t go back” is “once you go luminous you can’t go back”. I think my OH has expressed something along the lines of it just being too much effort when he considers dating someone who can’t just tell him if they are having system 1 issues.
Should rational men take into account when considering very long term relationships with women that the women are likely to remain physically and mentally healthy longer than the men are, with the effect being amplified if the woman is younger than the man? If that factor is considered, then independent good sense is very valuable.
To make it more specific, it’s highly likely that in a very long term heterosexual relationship, the woman will be wrangling medical personnel for the man. Of course, it’s also pretty likely that at some point, the man will wrangling medical personnel for the woman, just not as likely.
Numeracy level of both marriage partners has a large impact on lifetime savings
I hate to No-True-Scotswoman you but I can’t help but wonder exactly how rational she was—the cases I know have all been drawn from either East Coast or West Coast whole communities with corresponding personal transmission of skills.
Enough that by my best estimate based on what exposure to and information that I have about those communities she could easily soar to high levels of status within either (take that either way). Probably collecting an arbitrary sized harem in a matter of weeks.
Rationalist skills are impressive and sometimes convenient for lovers to have but again, I’d be just as impressed with and drawn to an interested prospective mate with Taekwondo or Jujutsu skills who was willing to spar with me. I’m reasonably aware of what I look for in a companion and a lover and that which is required to be respected as a rationalist just doesn’t happen to be near the top of the list.
I actually suspect there is an element of in group bias at play here—the same bias I see in my Christian friends and relatives who tell each other how much superior other Christians are as friends and romantic interests.
I’ve noticed a pretty strong in-group bias in myself WRT Less Wrong.
You two are so cute when your argue!!!
I have a (male) friend who answered $500 to this question. He teaches math (at the middle school level). It was a sad day.
Of course it’s not just women! Women (outside the community, that is) are more likely to respond that way than men, but that’s from a study on both risk aversion and hyperbolic discounting which showed that “Women can’t take small risks and men are creatures of the now”, with both effects diminishing as scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test increased.
I now wonder what would happen if I asked a man on the street to choose between $500 immediately or $1 million in 10 years (= 113% annual interest) - a version that extreme wasn’t in the original study, just the extreme version of the risk-aversion Q. I wouldn’t expect it to work, but then I wouldn’t have expected it to work with risk aversion either!
I would expect that to depend a great deal on their confidence that you would in fact provide $1 million in ten years.
Likewise, the original question depends on their confidence that you’re not overestimating/lying about the probability they will get the $1,000,000.
Yes. EY’s introduction of “immediately” is what changes the equation for me.… I might well choose $500 in my hand right now over the promise of $1million in ten years, whereas I probably would not choose the promise of $500 in an hour over the promise of $1 million in ten years.
Would you also choose $1 million in ten years over $1000 in an hour?
And would you choose $1000 in an hour over $500 right now?
If the answer to both questions is yes (and I think both are reasonable) then we may have an example of circular preferences on our hands.
Probably.
Ooh. That’s a toughie.
I suspect in practice it depends critically on all kinds of subliminal aspects of the situation… that is, which way I choose can probably be manipulated by the exact choice of words, what the person is wearing, yadda yadda. My guess is that I choose $500 right now for most versions of the choice, but $1000 for a substantial minority.
Single point of evidence- I would have to fight my inner self REALLY hard to choose the 15% chance at a million. (Inner turmoil!! Logic says Do Thing A, but I really Don’t Want To!!).
OTOH, the million in ten years is intuitively obvious to me and choosing it would be what I would’ve done even PRE-rationality.
This.
True for both genders.
Yep, though it’s weaker evidence to observe that (straight) female rationalists don’t go back when they can have their pick of mates and/or an entire harem by staying.
Actually, I have seen a couple of cases of women using their newly acquired Sanity Attractiveness Points(*) to pull in hot guys they want from outside the community, though in both such cases they still had rationalist mates on the side.
(*) = According to the one woman whose case I know in detail, this is apparently a pretty strong effect—a female from within rationalist culture, dealing with a guy from outside rationalist culture who has an unmet need for sanity, may appear unto him as a Goddess. Sort of the dating equivalent of what happens when people with unmet needs discover LW or read HPMOR.
I wonder what effect rationalist culture has on the attractiveness of guys who date outside the community. Are they more or less appealing than non-rationalist guys?
Now that is a strategy I can endorse.
I could believe that.
Ah, yes. I completely agree, and should clarify what I personally mean by “rationalist”. I care less whether they are (already) a part of the community, especially considering that the community in this city consists solely of people that were brought into it either by Jesse or myself.
Those “guy(s) from outside rationalist culture who has an unmet need for sanity, [she] may appear unto him as a Goddess.”—Yeah, that’s true, and I just consider them to be “Rationalists Who Don’t Know It Yet.”
I would be curious to know how people answer given the opportunity to spend $500 on a $1M/15% lottery ticket.
That depends a lot on the nature of the lottery. If it was a typical lottery that for some reason had a 15% chance to win, a $500 ticket would not be worth it as all, since thousands of people would win and split the prize amongst themselves and the expected value would be much less than you would assume at first glance.
If it’s just “spend $500 for a 15% chance of gaining a million,” though, I’d take as many tickets as I could get!
Yes, that version seems much less problematic, and I think the average person might be in favor of buying infinity tickets.
I might actually not want to buy one. (When no loss is involved I take the chance at a million.) I might want to buy five, or go in together with several friends on one.
(instantaneous reflex activated)
What if I gave you $500, then asked you if you wanted to spend it on the ticket?
I’d also like to know whether some unexpected expense, like needing a $500 dental crown, would change your mind about accepting the free $500 instead of the free ticket.
If you gave me $500 and then immediately alerted me to the availability of a ticket you’d probably catch me before the $500 entered the “my money” mental bin, because I’d still be a little confused about why you randomly handed me $500 and expect to have to give it back.
Risks of medium-sized unexpected expenses like that are already factored into how conservative I am about handling money on this scale, so I don’t think that would have an effect.
While I understand the sentiment, the physics department will not usually have a significantly higher volume of women than the local rationalist/etc. group.
As long as it’s got at least one lady who hasn’t already been recruited, what difference does that make?
I actually dislike the focus on pulling in people from physics/computer programming/math. As Dreaded_Anomaly mentions, these are fields which have just as bad of a gender ratio as here. As long as we continue focusing on those fields, I don’t think the gender ratio problem is going to get much better.
Also, I don’t think there’s anything inherent in rationality that means that it requires physics/programming/math types. But I think our current community is generally set up in a way to self-perpetuate that.
I can understand that STEMM types might more frequently lean towards rationality, which is why recruiting from there is often a suggestion. (If you have a .5 probability that a random intelligent STEMM person would be amenable to rationality, but only a .2 probability that a random intelligent person of another field would be, for example.)
A way to get around that: Personally, I’ve found that anyone I have a match of >94% on OKC has a high probability of being the aforementioned Rationalists Who Just Don’t Know It Yet. I myself was “recruited” this way. Dated someone from OKC (We no longer date, but are still REALLY good friends) who I was a 99% match with, and they pointed me toward HPMoR, then LW, etc, all while modeling “proper rationalist behavior” in our discussions. I think that’s all that it takes, often, to get someone interested in rationality (once you filter for interest, whether you use okc for this or not)
Agree that the OKCupid technique probably works too. But I wasn’t suggesting that we put up broad recruiting posters in the math department to solve the gender ratio thingy; I was suggesting that rationalist men seeking convertible mates try to date mathematical women. As Lucas observes, our community is still small enough that this provides a relatively large pool.
Good point! I understand what you are getting at. So long as it is also understood that mathematical does not necessarily equate to rational, and that rational does not require a person to be mathematical, etc.
What is the extra M for? Googling yields a band.
Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Medicine
Really? Back when I first joined I wouldn’t have been surprised by this, but they’ve fiddled around with the match algorithms since then, and 94% matches have gone from extremely rare compatibility to fairly trivial (and yes, I’ve checked against people whose match values I knew from before the algorithm changes to make sure it’s not just a result of a larger userbase.) These days, I could browse through a considerable number of people with that match rating before finding anyone I would expect to relate to.
A useful corollary of the last point is that anyone with the HPMOR tag on their profile is likely to be a very high match :)
On an individual level, this will work fine for a few people. It makes a difference, though, if everyone tries that specific strategy. The strategy will lose its effectiveness quickly, and the overall effect on the gender divide will not be very large.
Trying to bring more women into the relevant spheres is clearly a big part of the answer. However, simply moving women from one low-density area to another doesn’t seem very productive to me.
It is true that you receive dimishing marginal returns whenever you try to import people. Even if we were to use the largest available population sink, eventually we’d run into limits. The larger the population sinks you use, the less it has been filtered, so while your returns diminish more slowly, the effort required at the outset is larger.
Given the small size of our group, physics departments are more than large enough population sinks for the forseeable future.
That lady is usually quite ugly.
I think, perhaps LWers being unpleasant about women who aren’t conventionally attractive probably puts some women off LW. Unattractive women can be smart too!
ETA: To be clear, I think it’s fine to only want to date highly attractive women, but I think nastiness about those who aren’t is offputting.
Mine takes the 15% chance. She does not grok even very simple ‘formal systems’ though: she flunked bookkeeping in high school and once asked me how much .5 is, guessing that it meant one fifth.
If you really need the $500, why throw that away for a one-off, low odds chance for more? The first $500 almost certainly has greater marginal utility than the second, and possibly more than the next 1,999 put together. And that’s assuming the offer is totally legit, which is not very rational.
Sure, if they’re to starve (or freeze to death) within the month if not for this money, then certainly: accepting the bet would then become a 85% chance of death vs a 15% chance at a million. And rejecting a 85% chance of death is reasonable, even in the face of a 15% chance at a million.
But relatively very few of the people offered the choice would really be so much in need. There’s no point in finding ways to excuse simple irrationality by bringing in extreme scenarios that would justify it in some implausible cases....
Simple irrationality would be taking the implausible scenario both seriously and at face value. A priori, the likelihood of someone honestly offering you money for nothing is extremely low, as is the likelihood that they even have a million dollars to give away. If you don’t take the scenario seriously, it’s just a case of guessing the teacher’s password. If you do take it seriously, it would not be rational in most contexts take the offer at face value, in which case “$500 now” has about as a good an expected pay-off as any, and at least provides guaranteed evidence of the offer’s legitimacy.
At this point you’re just using pedantry to dismiss the very concept of hypothetical questions. The question is simple: What option you would take with the mentioned choices at hand as a given situation: Whether you’d prefer the certainty of 500 dollars or a 15% chance at 1 million.
As simple as that. You really don’t have to estimate how unlikely you’re to be given this option in reality. That’s why it’s called a “hypothetical” question.
And the question is likewise not about what you would do if you were in danger of starving to death. Just what you would do. You’re free to offer a conditional response (e.g. “I’d choose the 15% chance at a million, except if I was dead broke and in danger of immediate starvation), but just claiming that all possible responses are equally valid, regardless of conditions, just won’t fly.
I’m tapping out.
If you’re going to tap out, fair enough, but don’t do it after a three paragraph response. That’s just a chickenshit way of trying to have the last word.
I am a girl and I approve of this suggestion. I’ll also note that LW has been very good about this in all of my experiences here (discussion forum, IRC, and meetups IRL).
But I like dating subculture boys. Also, the bisexual one I see sometimes would not be deterred by considering me male for all social purposes.
And yet for all your interest and your polyhacking I suspect that you and those like you just don’t have sufficient time or sexual and romantic interest to satisfy the demand. (My apologies if I have underestimated your enthusiasm and endurance!) This inflates your value and means at a grossly simplified level that for a given level of attractiveness a male that doesn’t qualify to date you within this culture may attract women outside the subculture as attractive to you. Those that do qualify to date you could expect general population dating opportunities with women who are even sexier than you, or better at sport or who perhaps have neck-down alopecia.
I’m sure you’ll not be lacking for available, interested males. Unless all the males started looking elsewhere and didn’t notice that the incentives at the margin had changed. They’d also have to resist any overt advances you should happen to make!
Of course bisexual males also have more potential romantic interests, not being limited to the scarce female population. Perhaps that means this ‘avoid scarcity’ principle doesn’t even need special case treatment for bisexual males. Homosexual males on the other hand may get all confused if they try to implement it!
I have evidence-based insight into the gender ratio issue. Although it is not a solution, I think it will help everyone understand the problem better.
I have some unpleasant news which is related to IQ (and LessWrong has a higher than average IQ according to the member surveys). There’s something up with genetics and intelligence that goes like this (references included): Although men’s and women’s IQs are the same on average, there are far more gifted men than women. The explanation is that high intelligence is due to a mutation. Men are more affected by mutations. Therefore they are about twice as likely to get both beneficial and detrimental intelligence mutations, which is why they are unbalanced for gifted populations but even out in population averages. “Diseases inherited in an X-linked recessive pattern mostly affect males, because a second X chromosome usually protects females from showing symptoms.” (From: How Are Genetic Disorders Inherited?) See also: Mensa’s demographics page where they report a 33% female : 66% male ratio (for the top 2% in IQ).
I’ve heard it reported by people with very high IQs that the higher the IQ range, the worse the gap is. This may be true if higher IQs require multiple mutations.
If refining rationality, science, etc. or the specific forms of these that interest LW members tend to appeal most to people with high IQs, this ratio is probably, unfortunately, going to affect groups like these whatever you do. Of course, if the male to female ratio is 2:1 in Mensa (unsure what their average IQ is, just that the minimum is the top 2%) this means there’s probably room for improvement. However, short of genetic engineering or brain implants, the gender ratio problem is likely to persist for high IQ groups like this even if a perfect strategy was used for making women feel more comfortable.
If the important thing is to be able to have children one day, then creating or using a service for finding intelligent women who are willing to have children for others would be one way.
Another idea might be encouraging women to work extra hard to refine their rational thinking skills, explaining that they’ll interest more intelligent men that way. As we know, women can be picky and they tend to have a preference for intelligence. If they know that smart guys are looking for rational women, some of them may devote attention to it the way that many women currently devote attention to hair and make-up. Not all women will be interested, and it won’t solve the incompatibilities that IQ differences cause, but it may help bridge gaps that aren’t too great and lead to there being more female rationalists.
I feel that addressing the “creepiness” issues could go a long way to get interested women interacting more. Nerdy men are definitely my type but I’m often put off by their behavior. I’d like to date more, but the behaviors I describe here are disheartening, so I’m not nearly as motivated as I could be. Understanding women better is a great first step. I’m glad to see that the guys are looking into what’s going on.
Unfortunately, I can’t provide you advice or evidence and don’t know that anybody can—I’m not aware of any projects or experiments to specifically try to increase the number of females in a male dominated social group.
To clarify, I asked for evidence-based advice in order to avoid the useless platitudes that are usually offered in such situations. Bad advice is worse than no advice at all. I appreciate your honesty on the subject.