The fact is that there are a lot people who do think “women/men want” when they hear someone saying “women/men want”, and don’t understand that these aren’t just statistical trends.
I would tend to be one of them. But no woman or man is a ‘women’/‘men’. What the group—as a second-order simulacrum—wants isn’t necessarily what an individual instantiation of the group wants.
Also, I do feel like there are tendencies towards such over-generalization even among active LW commenters.
Given that all I have to work with is your quoting him as saying “a certain behavior” is suboptimal (in a manner so vague I haven’t a clue what position either of you were staking out) -- I cannot begin to make any informed statements on that topic.
Just to play devil’s-advocate here—have you considered the possibility that your feeling here represents an over-generalization about LW’ers over-generalizing?
Just to play devil’s-advocate here—have you considered the possibility that your feeling here represents an over-generalization about LW’ers over-generalizing?
Maybe. But I didn’t make any claims about exactly how common this attitude is among LW’ers, only that it seems to exist.
I can’t help but feel that this seems like something of a retraction of what I would refer to as “the informational meaningfulness” of your positional stance. It reduces an interesting statement to a trivial one.
I would tend to be one of them. But no woman or man is a ‘women’/‘men’. What the group—as a second-order simulacrum—wants isn’t necessarily what an individual instantiation of the group wants.
Given that all I have to work with is your quoting him as saying “a certain behavior” is suboptimal (in a manner so vague I haven’t a clue what position either of you were staking out) -- I cannot begin to make any informed statements on that topic.
Just to play devil’s-advocate here—have you considered the possibility that your feeling here represents an over-generalization about LW’ers over-generalizing?
Maybe. But I didn’t make any claims about exactly how common this attitude is among LW’ers, only that it seems to exist.
I can’t help but feel that this seems like something of a retraction of what I would refer to as “the informational meaningfulness” of your positional stance. It reduces an interesting statement to a trivial one.