I don’t want “politically correct”, I want actually correct.
My point was that I suspect that a presence of “politically incorrect” ideas increases our desire for actual correctness, while an absence of such ideas makes us relax.
Perhaps this bias already has a name; I don’t remember it. It means requiring stronger evidence to ideas you disagree with; and not being aware of it.
If you require the same level of proof for both “politically correct” and “politically incorrect” comments, then it is OK. But it seems to me that in many discussions the level of proof rises up at the moment that “politically incorrect” opinions are introduced.
EDIT: Of course, even if my hypothesis is true, this is not an evidence for “politically incorrect” ideas (that would just be trying to reverse stupidity).
EDIT2: I would like to taboo the term “politically incorrect” in this comment, but I can’t find a short enough substitute with the same expressive power. I would like to make it more group-dependent, not outside-world-dependent. It is supposed to mean: something that a decent member of this group would hesitate to say, because the morality keepers of this group will obviously disagree.
My point was that I suspect that a presence of “politically incorrect” ideas increases our desire for actual correctness, while an absence of such ideas makes us relax.
Perhaps this bias already has a name; I don’t remember it. It means requiring stronger evidence to ideas you disagree with; and not being aware of it.
It’s pretty clear that if we’re dealing with ideas whose incorrect versions have great potential to do harm, then we should be careful to only disseminate the correct versions. It’s a question of epistemic hygiene and minimizing the effects of contaminated mindware.
If we were discussing the recipe for a food that tasted marvelous when prepared correctly, but could cause severe poisoning when prepared incorrectly, then I would want people to be precise and careful in their wording as well. “Requiring stronger evidence for ideas you disagree with” doesn’t have much to do with it: it’s a straightforward expected utility calculation.
What would be the context of the comment, and what sense of “equal” is implied?
For instance, I probably wouldn’t object to someone saying “men and women are equal” if it was clear from the context that they meant “men and women should have equal rights”. On the other hand, there are a variety of well-documented statistical differences between men and women, and trying to deny some of those might be harmful.
E.g. I’ve often heard it claimed that the difference in average pay between women and men is mostly attributable to differences in ambition and time voluntarily spent at home with children. I haven’t looked at the matter enough to know if this is true. But if it is, then denying any population-level differences between men and women seems harmful, because it implies that something that actually has an innocuous explanation is because of discrimination.
I don’t think I’d use the word innocuous with the example of this reason for this gender difference. If it is a rational choice, why don’t both genders make similar choices?
Ok: let’s suppose he intended the primary definition of innocuous, “not harmful.” If a choice is made voluntarily, then by the assumption of revealed preferences it is the least ‘harmful.’ If we forced women to choose with the same distribution that men do, then on net women would be worse off- i.e. harmed by our force.
It seems incontestable to me that distributions of values are different for men and women. If values are different, choices will be different, and that is optimal.
I agree that men and women have different distributions of values due to sexual dimorphism. It isn’t obvious, though, that those different values are sufficient to explain women choosing to stay and home and raise children at a greater rate than men. For example, it may be the case the women face greater social pressure to raise children or that when couples choose who should continue working and who should stay home there is an unjustified cultural assumption that women should be the ones who stay home. There may also be social pressures in the other direction: pushing men to work more than is optimal. It is harder to find social companionship as a stay at home father and Western culture ties the ability to provide for a family to man’s worth. Even if these cultural norms are the product of on-average sexual dimorphism they would still harm those who deviate from the average values of their sex. A man who prefers to stay home and raise children and a woman who prefers to leave children at home to work may face additional costs to their decisions because their values deviate from what they are expected to value due to their gender.
I do not have any objection to your use of the word innocuous, here.
I think that calling the choice to spend more or less time doing financially unrecompensed work in the home an innocuous gender difference, is careless. The harms of the various choices have not been evaluated that well. And it may be impossible to evaluate that harm without bias.
It is not uncompensated financially, if the alternative is hiring someone to do the same work. It may or may not be under-compensated, depending on her other options.
Yay! Do you think your evaluation is bias-free? How much should normally financially-uncompensated work in the home be worth, market prices? Which is worth more, an investment of time or money?
Between cooks and gardeners and housekeepers and nannies and laundry services and grocery delivery and personal assistants, I am really failing to think of any housework that could not be contracted out. In which case, when members of the household do it themselves they are saving themselves precisely the cost of contracting it out. My laundering my shirts is being compensated at .99 cents/lb minus the cost of running the laundry machines. My cooking dinner is being compensated at the price of a meal out minus the cost of a meal in.
I think that calling the choice to spend more or less time doing financially unrecompensed work in the home an innocuous gender difference, is careless. The harms of the various choices have not been evaluated that well. And it may be impossible to evaluate that harm without bias.
The actual choices people make are often very carefully calculated with regard to benefits. And this includes both the choice to leave ‘home’ work to paid professionals, or unpaid amateurs. And the choice to become a well-paid professional (or self-employed professional).
I totally agree with this point:
(One specific example: women have ovaries, men have testes. Both organs release mind-affecting hormones, in different distributions.)
But rationally understanding the gender bias inherent in different choices does not make cleaning up after any other person, unpaid, a wholly joyous choice.
Circumstance 1) I go to my programming job, write programs for other people, and in the end my household has more money than otherwise.
Circumstance 2) Someone goes to a housekeeping job, cleans up after other people, and in the end their household has more money than otherwise.
Circumstance 3) Someone cleans their own household, part of which involves cleaning up after other people, in place of hiring a housekeeper, and in the end their household has more money than otherwise.
Please clarify why circumstance 2 is “paid” and circumstance 3 is “unpaid”, and why 3 is less “joyous” than 2; 3 may, in fact, prefer to be cleaning up for people they care about, and may be better appreciated. And who says a choice being “wholly joyous” is relevant anyway? My going to work instead of working on my own projects is the right decision (I believe), but it is not “wholly joyous”—just mostly.
My only point is this: gender differences and choice difference probably do not wholly justify the pay inequity between genders. The choice of the word ‘innocuous’ in this case is careless. Do you agree, or disagree?
In answer to your explicit question: I am speaking of negotiable payment, in tokens that can be exchanged in any market. And I am also calculating payment of intangible compensation, like the respect of others and self-respect. I find your actual questions, with quoted words to denote careful usage, confusing.
Payment in ‘increased money for the household’ is fine, and is part of the calculations individuals use to evaluate and justify their choices. And joys.
“wholly joyous” is, in my mind, an unattainable ideal, but the joy, payment, and respect individuals get for the work that they/we do is measurable, if not always negotiable. And the harm is not always considered at all.
I was never addressing the entirety of your argument—on which I have to reserve judgment, having not thought it through entirely.
As it happens, my wife and I both work. We both receive income in tokens that can be exchanged in any market. However, I think this is a meaningless distinction; per the laws of the state of California, money I make isn’t “mine” and money she makes “hers”—money either of us make is “ours”. As either of us works, we have more tokens. As either of us does tasks that save us money, we have more tokens. Describing the latter as not involving “financial recompense” I view as inaccurate.
If you simply wish to state that such work is under-compensated financially, I may agree. If you wish to state that such work is often under-appreciated, I would certainly agree. You stated that house work was financially unrecompensed.
I was simply picking a nit. If it critically undermines your argument, update. If it doesn’t, fix your argument. If you still disagree, please explain why.
I am really enjoying this discussion. And I respect the fact that you are reserving judgment, as you haven’t thought it out very thoroughly.
I didn’t think my objection to the use of the word innocuous through before I voiced it, and I absolutely don’t regret it.
But I am literally having trouble figuring out what else I am supposed to object to. I am willing to try to explain. And I think I can better understand my position, if I understand IF or HOW people disagree with my original objection about word choice. I have not stated this confusion often or clearly enough, so, to set a ‘good’ example, I will state it as a question:
Do you approve of the word innocuous, meaning harmless, in the statement above? Why or why not?
Having said all that, I’ll give it a stab a reply to your more recent comments anyway. The use of a question mark in your words makes it much easier for me to identify your question, and answer it.
Personal note: I am not usually trying to be ironic, but I am aware that I often come across that way. I make special effort on LW to be more precise and direct, and careful in my statements. Taking out the word ‘totally’, which I usually sling about in order to increase positive feedback in my day-to-day life, in order to suggest that I have a sense of humor about my unfortunate ‘know it all’ attitude may have been an error. Feel free to assume I am just trying to make a humorous point instead of a serious one, if you find me offensive on a rational level!
But enough about me...
‘such work’ is not defined, but I assume you are referring to home work, whether paid in negotiable tokens or ‘financially unrecompensed’.
I did not notice stating this:
You stated that house work was financially unrecompensed.
And what the state of CA thinks about the negotiable and non-negotiable arrangements you make with each other, or with employers, I do not really care about, as long as CA does not force you to live there, and there are a wide variety of other options available to you both. Do you have a wide variety of other options?
As either of us does tasks that save us money, we have more tokens. Describing the latter as not involving “financial recompense” I view as inaccurate.
I disagree with your conclusion, but on a somewhat pedantic level. Financial recompense and Optional reduction of financial expense are not equivalent. One is simply a pile of tokens. The other is a choice and a judgment about what to do with a pile of tokens. Do you disagree?
I disagree with your conclusion, but on a somewhat pedantic level. Financial recompense and Optional reduction of financial expense are not equivalent. One is simply a pile of tokens. The other is a choice and a judgment about what to do with a pile of tokens. Do you disagree?
It depends somewhat on whether we are speaking descriptively or prescriptively, in terms of how people think about it.
Do I think that most people consider these to be the same, and that you are some odd outlier for interpreting it differently? No.
I just think this perspective is less useful, and leads to (amongst other things) such work being undervalued. Fundamentally, I have a set of choices in front of me that represent different outcomes; in some of these, my pile of tokens is larger than in others. When my pile of tokens is larger down one path than another, I am being financially compensated for making that choice (or financially penalized for making the other).
Well, I totally agree that ‘such work’ (some paid and some unpaid work in the home) is absolutely undervalued, but I’m not sure what that has to do with any particular perspective.
I don’t know how other people think about the unpaid housework that other people are doing. I personally am grateful for it, but I have never supported anyone who I shared housework with, nor the reverse, and I really do have trouble doing the part I actually recognize as my share. And I have never cared as much about how clean things ‘ought’ to be as any of these roommates and ex-boyfriends did.
In myself, I kind of deplore this tendency to do what I’m inclined to and let the chips fall where they may. I do, of course, always manage to get things clean enough for my own standards. And I do far more housework when I live alone, because nobody else gets ‘fed up’ and takes over.
I had to respond somewhat anecdotally here, and I wish I could keep the more analytical, academic tone of your comment. My main problem with that is I’m not sure if I’m being descriptive or prescriptive, so I don’t know how to respond without figuring that out—but I need a nap first and I wanted to reply right away. If I’ve made it clear which I was doing with this response, that was totally my intention!
I can’t tell if your comment is mostly explanatory, or requests confirmation or introduces a new topic! Taking that nap now.
OK. I consider negotiable tokens to be the only definition of financially recompensed. An optional reduction of financial expense, on an individual level is simply personal budgeting.
In the case of any particular couple, how the work, paid or unpaid, is divided, I don’t really care. Unless the arrangement is a source of stress for that relationship.
I think that a gender-biased pay disparity can aggravate financial stress in heterosexual relationships. And I think that a high disparity in income level can cause a similar stress in any couple, no matter the actual gender or sexual orientation.
The questions of ‘how best can i contribute’ and ‘am I acting responsibly by choosing to contribute, unpaid, in the home while being supported (fully or partially) on someone else’s “dime” (long may it last)’ are difficult and sometimes conflicting questions, whether gender pay inequities are biased. Or irrelevant, because the couple are of the same gender.
Questions I wonder about but do not know the answers to:
How common are one-income households in either situation? How stable are one-income households compared to two income households? I’m pretty sure there’s quite a lot of data on heterosexuals.
Since gender bias probably exists, I wish we could compare it to data on homosexual couples, but they do not get the same social support or suffer the same social pressures… so I’m not sure how meaningful a comparison would be. But I’m still curious.
In the case of any particular couple, how the work, paid or unpaid, is divided, I don’t really care. Unless the arrangement is a source of stress for that relationship.
I agree.
In one of my dreams last night, I was living with a sorceress. She needed some reagents, and her friend on the moon wanted to use a human skeleton for some occult purpose. So she removed my first person perspective/spirit from my body and put it on the mantle across from the magic mirror, so I could see things that were going on. She then incinerated my flesh, leaving charred bones held together in human form by magic.
I then watched an Indiana Jones-style path animation of my skeleton going to the moon, and of magic supplies for my sorceress girlfriend being sent from there to Earth. Other stuff happened in the magic mirror, and eventually there was another path animation of my bones being sent back. My bones were magically cleaned, flesh was put on them, and my spirit was returned to my body.
Despite the fact that she didn’t ask my permission, I didn’t mind and wasn’t bothered by the events as they happened. In real life, I’m a different person and would probably mind such a thing.
My point is that whether something having to do with relative income or who does what in a relationship is a source of stress depends on the mindsets of the people in the relationship. If neither member of a couple minds acquiring goods or negotiable tokens by having one suddenly extrude the other’s soul, scorch their body until their bones are black, and lend them to friends, and they’re happier that way than they would be in less gruesome scenarios...that’s what works for them.
My point is that whether something having to do with relative income or who does what in a relationship is a source of stress depends on the mindsets of the people in the relationship. If neither member of a couple minds acquiring goods or negotiable tokens by having one suddenly extrude the other’s soul, scorch their body until their bones are black, and lend them to friends, and they’re happier that way than they would be in less gruesome scenarios...that’s what works for them.
It seems so obvious when you put it that way. (Upvoted for divine lunacy.)
I don’t want to get involved in the personal business between any two or three+ people, but I also do not mean to suggest that every arrangement that both parties agree to has a matching balance of stress and benefit to both parties. (Love your dream scenario! for me, that would totally be a nightmare.)
And I don’t think any specific gender causes the harm for a pattern of gender differences, like a bias to favor male employees because people report more satisfaction with male employees.
But with a gender-based pay inequity, which couples benefit most? gay men, straight people, or lesbians?
And should we care more about couples than we do about individuals, eg: single women? I don’t think anybody is suggesting this. But this is, in my mind, the primary problem with gender-based pay inequities, and ‘innocuous’ causes are no longer ‘innocuous’ if the harm to individuals is measurable and significant.
gender differences and choice difference probably do not wholly justify the pay inequity between genders.
To say that a situation is not wholly caused by enumerated factors is generally trivially true, so the question becomes how much connotation is intended, which means the question should probably be rephrased.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to ask if states of the world are justified when people disagree about the causes of those states of the world unless great care is taken to not be confusing. Those things can be addressed separately by just talking about causation and also asking what would be justified under a hypothetical set of facts.
And I am also calculating payment of intangible compensation, like the respect of others and self-respect.
I don’t know how to think of those things, particularly self respect, particularly since the frame is not just causation but justice.
To say that a situation is not wholly caused by enumerated factors is generally trivially true, so the question becomes how much connotation is intended, which means the question should probably be rephrased.
Very true, and I must pedantically point out that I did not ask a question about how much connotation was intended. I suggested that the connotation of ‘harmless’ seemed careless to me. Literally and seriously careless, especially given my trivial research into the subject revealed that there is bias for male employees that employers, rationally, respond to.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to ask if states of the world are justified when people disagree about the causes of those states of the world unless great care is taken to not be confusing. Those things can be addressed separately by just talking about causation and also asking what would be justified under a hypothetical set of facts.
I agree. I was trying to avoid this, because I mostly agree. I did not bring up the state of the world, and I seriously did avoid discussion of it in this thread, which apparently was also offensive? I am somewhat concerned about the state of the world, but I already take great care not to be confusing, and fail.
I do have some doubts about drawing conclusions from a hypothetical set of facts, unless those conclusions are testable and, in fact, tested. But I am philosophically inclined to talk hypotheticals long into the night...
I don’t know how to think of those things, particularly self respect, particularly since the frame is not just causation but justice.
Well, I probably care more about justice than I do just word choice. But I do far more for the cause of just word choice than any other. I will apologize for being elusive on more serious issues. I probably could have caused less confusion if I had not specifically tried to avoided answering questions about states of the world. Do you agree?
Not sure if serious. Just in case you are, however: ‘them’ is referring to the people doing financially unrecompensed work in the home. ‘it’ is the financially unrecompensed work in the home. ‘Who’ and ‘Whose’ are up to you to define—that’s why they’re phrased as questions, dontcha know.
I am trying to be clear about the fact that the ONLY part of this thread I care about was the use of the word ‘innocuous’. All these other questions are good questions that people are asking, and answering, for themselves, and for other people, every day. Which I have no quarrel with.
I do not want to answer these questions for other people. This question:
Who would compensate them? Whose benefit is it for?
is an excellent question that I actually do not want to answer, because noone has acknowledged that my point about the word innocuous is valid or valuable criticism. All the feedback I have seen so far dodges this small point to ask me much tougher questions about how individuals should be making these choices.
Why me? I make no assertions other than that the word ‘innocuous’ in that specific argument suggests that the reasons their is gender pay inequity is harmless. Because I am not sure that it is harmless.
I do not want to quantify the harm, but if you want me to take a stab at it, how about this:
Do some pay inequities cause stress? Does stress aggravate some mental disorders?
(for the record, I am not trying to suggest that this harm is greater to either gender!)
Who would compensate them? Whose benefit is it for?
is an excellent question that I actually do not want to answer,
or is it that “I do not really understand your questions.”? Or did my explanation allow you to understand that you didn’t want to answer, or...
Point the second—Hypothetically, if this:
the difference in average pay between women and men is mostly attributable to differences in ambition and time voluntarily spent at home with children.
is true, then gender pay inequities do have an innocuous explanation- namely, the above. Kaj_Sotala made no claims beyond that, certainly not to the extent of claiming the above statement is true in the real world.
This leads me to believe your point is not valid or valuable criticism. If you think I’m wrong, could you explain why?
Well… I highly doubt it, both because the original ‘confusion’ seemed blindingly obvious to me and because
I am trying to be clear about the fact that the ONLY part of this thread I care about was the use of the word ‘innocuous’. All these other questions are good questions that people are asking, and answering, for themselves, and for other people, every day. Which I have no quarrel with.
I do not want to answer these questions for other people. …
… that I actually do not want to answer, because noone has acknowledged that my point about the word innocuous is valid or valuable criticism.
indicates to me something other than “Oh, so that’s what that was about!” In fact, it seems more along the lines of “Your clarification was not needed because I was missing the point intentionally.”
But in the interests of being as charitable as possible, I have edited my reply.
Than you for making clear that you do not agree that my point is valid or valuable criticism.
My objection to the word choice of harmless is based on my feelings, which I have not fully examined, that there may be harm.
Point the second—Hypothetically, if this:
the difference in average pay between women and men is mostly attributable to differences in ambition and time voluntarily spent at home with children.
is true, then gender pay inequities do have an innocuous explanation- namely, the above. Kaj_Sotala made no claims beyond that, certainly not to the extent of claiming the above statement is true in the real world.
Hypothetically, I agree with you.
I think I am having the most objection, in the statement you quote, with the phrase ‘mostly attributable’. I can think of several other reasons that can and do account for a gender-based inequity, all possibly innocuous. The one that springs to mind is something to do with women and negotiation of payscale, but as I look for resource that can explain what I mean by that more clearly than I have managed to, I came across another interesting theory on wikipedia, that I had never heard of before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_pay_for_women#Different_Studies_and_Economic_Theories
“They interpret their findings to suggest that employers are willing to pay more for white male employees because employers are customer driven and customers are happier with white male employees. They also suggest that what is required to solve the problem of wage inequality isn’t necessarily paying women more but changing customer biases.”
This difference does not seem so harmless. Do you agree?
the difference in average pay between women and men is mostly attributable to differences in ambition and time voluntarily spent at home with children.
is true, then gender pay inequities do have an innocuous explanation- namely, the above. Kaj_Sotala made no claims beyond that, certainly not to the extent of claiming the above statement is true in the real world.
Hypothetically, I agree with you.
I think this might be confusing pedanterrific because if I read you right above you don’t agree with him. I thought your position was similar to the one I made here that that explanation of pay inequality, even if true, is not innocuous because the reason why men and women make different choices about work and home life could be harmful social pressure, or some other reason that we don’t think people should have to face in an ideal world. But I could have misread you when you wrote this:
I don’t think I’d use the word innocuous with the example of this reason for this gender difference. If it is a rational choice, why don’t both genders make similar choices?
Mostly I was not sure what pedanterrific was arguing, but I asked him to clarify, and he did. I am often unintentionally funny to other people. Lately I am getting better at understanding what the ‘subversion of expectations’ I am committing.
I absolutely agree with your point, but I was not conscious of why the word innocuous bothered me when I made my comment, and I don’t actually know if I read your comments before this moment. I don’t always read every comment before I respond, and I don’t ‘notice’ consciously everything I do read. Confusions galore!
Yes, of course. That’s trivially true and not in dispute.
I still think you’re rather missing the point, however. I don’t see how it makes sense to object to the phrase ‘mostly attributable’ when that’s a premise of the hypothetical. Let’s look at the original comment in context:
E.g. I’ve often heard it claimed that the difference in average pay between women and men is mostly attributable to differences in ambition and time voluntarily spent at home with children. I haven’t looked at the matter enough to know if this is true. But if it is, then denying any population-level differences between men and women seems harmful, because it implies that something that actually has an innocuous explanation is because of discrimination.
That is, IF [the difference is mostly attributable to something innocuous], THEN [denying population-level differences seems harmful]. That’s all that was said. Kaj_Sotala never claimed the innocuous explanation was true.
Editeditedit: I apologize for my horrible social skills.
let me just say that ‘like, really?’ comes across as dismissive of all my efforts to explain what I care about, in the context of my original remark, and why I care about the word ‘innocuous’ in the hypothetical statement.
I am generous to assume that are not trying to crush my will to respond with irony, and are seriously confused.
But it is more difficult for me to maintain this generosity of spirit after you have already dismissed something relevant to the hypothetical argument and my objection to the word ‘innocuous’ as ‘trivialy true and not in dispute’.
And I am totally willing to maintain at least a pretense of generosity of spirit, because I have plenty of experience with losing my generosity of spirit, and I know that it keeps growing back.
But I wasn’t faking any enthusiasm or bewilderment before I read your comment with those two apparently dismissive word choices. “trivial” and “like”.
No, it set mine off too—I avoided the error only by paying attention to the tone and attitude of the rest of her comments (which make sarcasm coming from her [assuming her based on gender conventions around the phonetics of the handle] look very unlikely).
No, I am sure that they are normal, and partly because my mental problem which I have mentioned elsewhere, includes depression. In person, it is very hard to tell if a depressed person is sincere or sarcastic, I just wasn’t aware until now that this problem (I think call it ‘affect’?) is something I also ought to consider in a pure text situation.
In person I usually fake enthusiasm, but I am fortunately not that good at it. <--serious and funny, yet again. at least it was intentional.
I edited my previous comment to make my meaning clearer. Note that it’s only about that one quoted line.
you have already dismissed something relevant to the hypothetical argument and my objection to the word ‘innocuous’ as ‘trivialy true and not in dispute’.
“They interpret their findings to suggest that employers are willing to pay more for white male employees because employers are customer driven and customers are happier with white male employees. They also suggest that what is required to solve the problem of wage inequality isn’t necessarily paying women more but changing customer biases.”
describes a difference that is definitely not “harmless” no matter what the rest of your argument states. By “not in dispute” I meant “I agree with you, and was not aware that you thought we disagreed on this subject.”
E.g. I’ve often heard it claimed that the difference in average pay between women and men is mostly attributable to differences in ambition and time voluntarily spent at home with children. I haven’t looked at the matter enough to know if this is true. But if it is, then denying any population-level differences between men and women seems harmful, because it implies that something that actually has an innocuous explanation is because of discrimination.
One common explanation of harm and utilities is that the “real” or important utility function held by a human is that implied by the humans actions. If a human chooses A over B, that means to the human A has a higher value than B to the human. This runs us into problems, for example when humans choose B over C and C over A, but there is no agreed upon way to discuss the relationship of humans to utility functions. We just don’t know how to extract the human and cut the nonsense without cutting the human! This is despite extensively discussing extrapolate volition. One way to get people to actually choose consistently among A, B, and C is to teach them about this paradox, but let’s just say for our purposes here that it’s clearly not out of line to discuss people’s “true” preferences being something other than what they choose.
Vaniver: Ok: let’s suppose he intended the primary definition of innocuous, “not harmful.” If a choice is made voluntarily, then by the assumption of revealed preferences it is the least ‘harmful.’ If we forced women to choose with the same distribution that men do, then on net women would be worse off- i.e. harmed by our force.
Clarica: I think that calling the choice to spend more or less time doing financially unrecompensed work in the home an innocuous gender difference, is careless. The harms of the various choices have not been evaluated that well.
One issue is that language is flexible, and it is common to see “innocuous explanation” as a way of discussing the motives of a person causing the things the explanation explains, rather than according to the usual adjective-noun relationship where the adjective modifies the noun.
For example: a video teaching “how to fold a shirt” with the audio 50 decibels is a harmless explanation. The same video with the audio at 125 decibels is a harmful explanation.
No one argues that the explanation itself would have only good consequences, the discussion is instead what sort of harmlessness is meant instead. Whether the author’s intent is clearly that, if it is discovered that women’s actions alone cause the statistical difference, i) employers are doing no harm in the hypothetical case, or ii) if a similarly plausible interpretation is that no one is suffering harm, for had they chosen as men, there would be no disparity.
Context points to the first explanation as the best contrast with “discrimination”, what employers are allegedly doing, and what hypothetical evidence would clear them of, but it’s easy to see why someone intending the second point might have used the same words.
The sentence might be rewritten: “But if it is, then denying any population-level differences between men and women seems harmful, because it implies that something fully explained by innocuous behavior is because of discrimination.”
The principle of charity protects us in similar cases where we happen to only see one interpretation and it is the wrong one.
I feel like this is an accurate, thoughtful, and generous explanation of the confusion I have and the confusion I cause. If I could spend my few measly karma points upvoting this, I might!
After I read it, because it’s late, and I can not take it all in right now. And I’m grateful for the effort, and the clarity of the parts I already understand!
If I had downvoted it, it would be because I can’t really imagine reading “Who would compensate them?” and responding “Can you define ‘who’?” as a serious attempt at communication.
And you call yourself pedantic? There were a number of referents in my comment which could have applied, and while I usually feel at no disadvantage in a battle of wits, I have a mental problem that either renders me easily confused, or fully aware that I am not a mind reader.
This comment is supposed to be serious and funny. Can you guess which parts I think are funny, and why?
Actually, ‘this comment’ was self-referential. The comment you reviewed was intentionally serious, and unintentionally ridiculous. I get that a lot.
But ridiculous is funny, and I totally agree with your last judgement of funny, and wish I had noticed that it was funny, BEFORE I posted. I am trying to get comfortable with being accidentally funny.
I should really just stick with a pretense that everything funny I say is intentionally hilarious, instead of just occasionally patently ridiculous. Apparently.
Apparently so. Can you explain why it is interesting?
Edited to add: I assume you may be trying to explain what is interesting about my comments in the more serious and complicated response you may still be working on, but of which I have only seen the placeholder. I’d say that I can’t wait, but I have already had to...
In the self-referentially intentionally funny comment I make above, I was absolutely serious about having a mental problem. And about being easily confused. And about being painfully aware that I am not a mind reader. Absolutely intentionally serious, and, for a change, intentionally funny at the same time. Irony is LOST on me. or everybody else, and I have no way of telling which!
Someone (Eliezer?) once said something like: if you tell me exactly what it is that an Artificial Intelligence can’t do, I can build an AI to do exactly that. If a person who believes in a fundamental difference at that sort of level between machines and animals can precisely define something, a computer can follow that definition.
It doesn’t work quite as well here. But if someone gives a good enough answer for their question of “who”, with exactly why an animal wouldn’t count, or a computer, or a corporation, they may make their question so complicated that it only has one answer or no answers as asked.
Ah. I am abnormally careful about the question of ‘who would’ do something. People often take my serious suggestions as playful, and vice versa. I no longer recommend a new hairstyle to anyone because I have given this advice three times, it was always taken, and I only liked the results without qualification once.
I may be paranoid, but I do not like to worry about this. <-- also intentionally funny. I am trying to not to worry about whether it is true. <-- Also funny.
Heh, when arguing for the case that people should be careful with their wording, I’m challenged for a careless choice of wording. :-)
Innocuous in the sense of emerging from different-gendered people on average having different preferences and on average making different choices as a result. Me eating french fries every day, because I want to, is an innocous reason for eating french fries every day (though such behavior will probably cause health problems in the long term). Eating french fries every day because somebody pressures me into doing so, or because I genuinely can’t afford anything else, is a non-innocous reason.
I absolutely agree that there are many statistical differences between men and women, and trying to deny this is actually ludicrous, whether or not it is harmful!
However, I object to the word ludicrous, because while I agree that there are statistical (as well as biological and almost certainly evolutionarily-based cultural) differences between men and women, the assumption of harmlessness, based on that claim you’ve often heard, suggests that there is no bias involved other than personal choice. And personal choice is biased by so many other factors!
And, though I did not make this clear, I was not trying to suggest that the harm was one-sided.
The thing about bias was difficult for me to argue specifically until I explored the matter of pay inequity and the current state of research. Over the years I have heard a lot on the subject, which I do not remember that well.
Because though it is no trivial matter to me personally, personally, If I can’t identify a personal or cultural bias as actually causing me harm, I don’t get that excited about it. And frankly, if I haven’t identified what I should do about it, I try not to get exited about it if it is causing me harm. There are plenty of people in the world much more inclined than I to actually address the problems of gender-based pay inequities, which I think is a good thing.
It pretty much seems clear to me that a lot of men care more than women about getting a big pile of negotiable tokens. Statistical. Why women do less about getting a pile of negotiable tokens, I already understand. Some of this understanding of women may be visceral, or biological. I’m pretty sure most of it is pretty self-aware, or rational as well.
Why men care more I don’t understand as viscerally, but I am actually trying to understand better because I would like a bigger pile of negotiable tokens to play with. :)
What would be the context of the comment, and what sense of “equal” is implied?
Suppose lukeprog put it in the ancestral post.
For instance, I probably wouldn’t object to someone saying “men and women are equal” if it was clear from the context that they meant “men and women should have equal rights”. On the other hand, there are a variety of well-documented statistical differences between men and women, and trying to deny some of those might be harmful.
“Clear from the context” seems like the heart of the matter, here. If it can be clear from the context that when someone says “men and women are equal,” then mean the most sensible interpretation, then it seems similarly clear that a generalization with neither “some” nor “all” specified should be assumed to mean “some,” not “all.”
That’s still insufficient context: to be able to give a definite answer, I’d need something like the paragraph the sentence was contained in.
“Clear from the context” seems like the heart of the matter, here. If it can be clear from the context that when someone says “men and women are equal,” then mean the most sensible interpretation, then it seems similarly clear that a generalization wither neither “some” nor “all” specified should be assumed to mean “some,” not “all.”
Indeed. For what it’s worth, my prior for people misinterpreting “men and women are equal” is lower, though still not neglible, than my prior for people misinterpreting “all men want”. But again, depending on the context either interpretation for either sentence could be blindingly obvious, not obvious at all, or anything in between.
I would like to taboo the term “politically incorrect” in this comment, but I can’t find a short enough substitute with the same expressive power. I would like to make it more group-dependent, not outside-world-dependent. It is supposed to mean: something that a decent member of this group would hesitate to say, because the morality keepers of this group will obviously disagree.
“Taboo” itself actually sounds about right, although it carries connotations of low value that may not be what you’re going for.
Yeah, I’m familiar with Rationalist Taboo, and I was looking for a substitute for “politically incorrect” fitting the description provided. “Taboo”, in its sense of “culturally forbidden” rather than its sense of “party game about avoiding words”, is what I came up with. Sorry if that lacked clarity.
There are several reasons to play Rationalist Taboo, though; I’d assumed that the grandparent wanted to drop the phrase mainly because of its political loading (which seems to be causing some problems here), not because of any implicit assumptions or ambiguity of definition that needs to get aired out. In which case brevity would be no sin.
My point was that I suspect that a presence of “politically incorrect” ideas increases our desire for actual correctness, while an absence of such ideas makes us relax.
Perhaps this bias already has a name; I don’t remember it. It means requiring stronger evidence to ideas you disagree with; and not being aware of it.
If you require the same level of proof for both “politically correct” and “politically incorrect” comments, then it is OK. But it seems to me that in many discussions the level of proof rises up at the moment that “politically incorrect” opinions are introduced.
EDIT: Of course, even if my hypothesis is true, this is not an evidence for “politically incorrect” ideas (that would just be trying to reverse stupidity).
EDIT2: I would like to taboo the term “politically incorrect” in this comment, but I can’t find a short enough substitute with the same expressive power. I would like to make it more group-dependent, not outside-world-dependent. It is supposed to mean: something that a decent member of this group would hesitate to say, because the morality keepers of this group will obviously disagree.
It’s pretty clear that if we’re dealing with ideas whose incorrect versions have great potential to do harm, then we should be careful to only disseminate the correct versions. It’s a question of epistemic hygiene and minimizing the effects of contaminated mindware.
If we were discussing the recipe for a food that tasted marvelous when prepared correctly, but could cause severe poisoning when prepared incorrectly, then I would want people to be precise and careful in their wording as well. “Requiring stronger evidence for ideas you disagree with” doesn’t have much to do with it: it’s a straightforward expected utility calculation.
Suppose someone made the comment that “men and women are equal.” Would that statement be acceptable, or would it need revision for preciseness?
(To try and not bias your response, I’ll hold off on explaining the utility calculation I made with regards to that statement.)
What would be the context of the comment, and what sense of “equal” is implied?
For instance, I probably wouldn’t object to someone saying “men and women are equal” if it was clear from the context that they meant “men and women should have equal rights”. On the other hand, there are a variety of well-documented statistical differences between men and women, and trying to deny some of those might be harmful.
E.g. I’ve often heard it claimed that the difference in average pay between women and men is mostly attributable to differences in ambition and time voluntarily spent at home with children. I haven’t looked at the matter enough to know if this is true. But if it is, then denying any population-level differences between men and women seems harmful, because it implies that something that actually has an innocuous explanation is because of discrimination.
I don’t think I’d use the word innocuous with the example of this reason for this gender difference. If it is a rational choice, why don’t both genders make similar choices?
Sexual dimorphism?
(One specific example: women have ovaries, men have testes. Both organs release mind-affecting hormones, in different distributions.)
you do not address my point of the word choice ‘innocuous’.
Ok: let’s suppose he intended the primary definition of innocuous, “not harmful.” If a choice is made voluntarily, then by the assumption of revealed preferences it is the least ‘harmful.’ If we forced women to choose with the same distribution that men do, then on net women would be worse off- i.e. harmed by our force.
It seems incontestable to me that distributions of values are different for men and women. If values are different, choices will be different, and that is optimal.
I agree that men and women have different distributions of values due to sexual dimorphism. It isn’t obvious, though, that those different values are sufficient to explain women choosing to stay and home and raise children at a greater rate than men. For example, it may be the case the women face greater social pressure to raise children or that when couples choose who should continue working and who should stay home there is an unjustified cultural assumption that women should be the ones who stay home. There may also be social pressures in the other direction: pushing men to work more than is optimal. It is harder to find social companionship as a stay at home father and Western culture ties the ability to provide for a family to man’s worth. Even if these cultural norms are the product of on-average sexual dimorphism they would still harm those who deviate from the average values of their sex. A man who prefers to stay home and raise children and a woman who prefers to leave children at home to work may face additional costs to their decisions because their values deviate from what they are expected to value due to their gender.
I do not have any objection to your use of the word innocuous, here.
I think that calling the choice to spend more or less time doing financially unrecompensed work in the home an innocuous gender difference, is careless. The harms of the various choices have not been evaluated that well. And it may be impossible to evaluate that harm without bias.
It is not uncompensated financially, if the alternative is hiring someone to do the same work. It may or may not be under-compensated, depending on her other options.
Yay! Do you think your evaluation is bias-free? How much should normally financially-uncompensated work in the home be worth, market prices? Which is worth more, an investment of time or money?
Between cooks and gardeners and housekeepers and nannies and laundry services and grocery delivery and personal assistants, I am really failing to think of any housework that could not be contracted out. In which case, when members of the household do it themselves they are saving themselves precisely the cost of contracting it out. My laundering my shirts is being compensated at .99 cents/lb minus the cost of running the laundry machines. My cooking dinner is being compensated at the price of a meal out minus the cost of a meal in.
Have I demonstrated that calling such a choice ‘innocuous’ is a careless word choice yet?
You think my choice to cook a meal for myself and my wife, rather than (say) ordering a pizza, is not innocuous?
The actual choices people make are often very carefully calculated with regard to benefits. And this includes both the choice to leave ‘home’ work to paid professionals, or unpaid amateurs. And the choice to become a well-paid professional (or self-employed professional).
I totally agree with this point:
But rationally understanding the gender bias inherent in different choices does not make cleaning up after any other person, unpaid, a wholly joyous choice.
My only point is that it is not unpaid.
Circumstance 1) I go to my programming job, write programs for other people, and in the end my household has more money than otherwise.
Circumstance 2) Someone goes to a housekeeping job, cleans up after other people, and in the end their household has more money than otherwise.
Circumstance 3) Someone cleans their own household, part of which involves cleaning up after other people, in place of hiring a housekeeper, and in the end their household has more money than otherwise.
Please clarify why circumstance 2 is “paid” and circumstance 3 is “unpaid”, and why 3 is less “joyous” than 2; 3 may, in fact, prefer to be cleaning up for people they care about, and may be better appreciated. And who says a choice being “wholly joyous” is relevant anyway? My going to work instead of working on my own projects is the right decision (I believe), but it is not “wholly joyous”—just mostly.
It may cause caring about them.
My only point is this: gender differences and choice difference probably do not wholly justify the pay inequity between genders. The choice of the word ‘innocuous’ in this case is careless. Do you agree, or disagree?
In answer to your explicit question: I am speaking of negotiable payment, in tokens that can be exchanged in any market. And I am also calculating payment of intangible compensation, like the respect of others and self-respect. I find your actual questions, with quoted words to denote careful usage, confusing.
Payment in ‘increased money for the household’ is fine, and is part of the calculations individuals use to evaluate and justify their choices. And joys.
“wholly joyous” is, in my mind, an unattainable ideal, but the joy, payment, and respect individuals get for the work that they/we do is measurable, if not always negotiable. And the harm is not always considered at all.
I was never addressing the entirety of your argument—on which I have to reserve judgment, having not thought it through entirely.
As it happens, my wife and I both work. We both receive income in tokens that can be exchanged in any market. However, I think this is a meaningless distinction; per the laws of the state of California, money I make isn’t “mine” and money she makes “hers”—money either of us make is “ours”. As either of us works, we have more tokens. As either of us does tasks that save us money, we have more tokens. Describing the latter as not involving “financial recompense” I view as inaccurate.
If you simply wish to state that such work is under-compensated financially, I may agree. If you wish to state that such work is often under-appreciated, I would certainly agree. You stated that house work was financially unrecompensed. I was simply picking a nit. If it critically undermines your argument, update. If it doesn’t, fix your argument. If you still disagree, please explain why.
I am really enjoying this discussion. And I respect the fact that you are reserving judgment, as you haven’t thought it out very thoroughly.
I didn’t think my objection to the use of the word innocuous through before I voiced it, and I absolutely don’t regret it.
But I am literally having trouble figuring out what else I am supposed to object to. I am willing to try to explain. And I think I can better understand my position, if I understand IF or HOW people disagree with my original objection about word choice. I have not stated this confusion often or clearly enough, so, to set a ‘good’ example, I will state it as a question:
Do you approve of the word innocuous, meaning harmless, in the statement above? Why or why not?
Having said all that, I’ll give it a stab a reply to your more recent comments anyway. The use of a question mark in your words makes it much easier for me to identify your question, and answer it.
Personal note: I am not usually trying to be ironic, but I am aware that I often come across that way. I make special effort on LW to be more precise and direct, and careful in my statements. Taking out the word ‘totally’, which I usually sling about in order to increase positive feedback in my day-to-day life, in order to suggest that I have a sense of humor about my unfortunate ‘know it all’ attitude may have been an error. Feel free to assume I am just trying to make a humorous point instead of a serious one, if you find me offensive on a rational level!
But enough about me...
‘such work’ is not defined, but I assume you are referring to home work, whether paid in negotiable tokens or ‘financially unrecompensed’.
I did not notice stating this:
And what the state of CA thinks about the negotiable and non-negotiable arrangements you make with each other, or with employers, I do not really care about, as long as CA does not force you to live there, and there are a wide variety of other options available to you both. Do you have a wide variety of other options?
I disagree with your conclusion, but on a somewhat pedantic level. Financial recompense and Optional reduction of financial expense are not equivalent. One is simply a pile of tokens. The other is a choice and a judgment about what to do with a pile of tokens. Do you disagree?
It depends somewhat on whether we are speaking descriptively or prescriptively, in terms of how people think about it.
Do I think that most people consider these to be the same, and that you are some odd outlier for interpreting it differently? No.
I just think this perspective is less useful, and leads to (amongst other things) such work being undervalued. Fundamentally, I have a set of choices in front of me that represent different outcomes; in some of these, my pile of tokens is larger than in others. When my pile of tokens is larger down one path than another, I am being financially compensated for making that choice (or financially penalized for making the other).
Well, I totally agree that ‘such work’ (some paid and some unpaid work in the home) is absolutely undervalued, but I’m not sure what that has to do with any particular perspective.
I don’t know how other people think about the unpaid housework that other people are doing. I personally am grateful for it, but I have never supported anyone who I shared housework with, nor the reverse, and I really do have trouble doing the part I actually recognize as my share. And I have never cared as much about how clean things ‘ought’ to be as any of these roommates and ex-boyfriends did.
In myself, I kind of deplore this tendency to do what I’m inclined to and let the chips fall where they may. I do, of course, always manage to get things clean enough for my own standards. And I do far more housework when I live alone, because nobody else gets ‘fed up’ and takes over.
I had to respond somewhat anecdotally here, and I wish I could keep the more analytical, academic tone of your comment. My main problem with that is I’m not sure if I’m being descriptive or prescriptive, so I don’t know how to respond without figuring that out—but I need a nap first and I wanted to reply right away. If I’ve made it clear which I was doing with this response, that was totally my intention!
I can’t tell if your comment is mostly explanatory, or requests confirmation or introduces a new topic! Taking that nap now.
This was my understanding of the comment here, and was what I initially objected to.
OK. I consider negotiable tokens to be the only definition of financially recompensed. An optional reduction of financial expense, on an individual level is simply personal budgeting.
In the case of any particular couple, how the work, paid or unpaid, is divided, I don’t really care. Unless the arrangement is a source of stress for that relationship.
I think that a gender-biased pay disparity can aggravate financial stress in heterosexual relationships. And I think that a high disparity in income level can cause a similar stress in any couple, no matter the actual gender or sexual orientation.
The questions of ‘how best can i contribute’ and ‘am I acting responsibly by choosing to contribute, unpaid, in the home while being supported (fully or partially) on someone else’s “dime” (long may it last)’ are difficult and sometimes conflicting questions, whether gender pay inequities are biased. Or irrelevant, because the couple are of the same gender.
Questions I wonder about but do not know the answers to: How common are one-income households in either situation? How stable are one-income households compared to two income households? I’m pretty sure there’s quite a lot of data on heterosexuals.
Since gender bias probably exists, I wish we could compare it to data on homosexual couples, but they do not get the same social support or suffer the same social pressures… so I’m not sure how meaningful a comparison would be. But I’m still curious.
I agree.
In one of my dreams last night, I was living with a sorceress. She needed some reagents, and her friend on the moon wanted to use a human skeleton for some occult purpose. So she removed my first person perspective/spirit from my body and put it on the mantle across from the magic mirror, so I could see things that were going on. She then incinerated my flesh, leaving charred bones held together in human form by magic.
I then watched an Indiana Jones-style path animation of my skeleton going to the moon, and of magic supplies for my sorceress girlfriend being sent from there to Earth. Other stuff happened in the magic mirror, and eventually there was another path animation of my bones being sent back. My bones were magically cleaned, flesh was put on them, and my spirit was returned to my body.
Despite the fact that she didn’t ask my permission, I didn’t mind and wasn’t bothered by the events as they happened. In real life, I’m a different person and would probably mind such a thing.
My point is that whether something having to do with relative income or who does what in a relationship is a source of stress depends on the mindsets of the people in the relationship. If neither member of a couple minds acquiring goods or negotiable tokens by having one suddenly extrude the other’s soul, scorch their body until their bones are black, and lend them to friends, and they’re happier that way than they would be in less gruesome scenarios...that’s what works for them.
It seems so obvious when you put it that way. (Upvoted for divine lunacy.)
I don’t want to get involved in the personal business between any two or three+ people, but I also do not mean to suggest that every arrangement that both parties agree to has a matching balance of stress and benefit to both parties. (Love your dream scenario! for me, that would totally be a nightmare.)
And I don’t think any specific gender causes the harm for a pattern of gender differences, like a bias to favor male employees because people report more satisfaction with male employees.
But with a gender-based pay inequity, which couples benefit most? gay men, straight people, or lesbians?
And should we care more about couples than we do about individuals, eg: single women? I don’t think anybody is suggesting this. But this is, in my mind, the primary problem with gender-based pay inequities, and ‘innocuous’ causes are no longer ‘innocuous’ if the harm to individuals is measurable and significant.
Great :)
I’ll be responding to the above in several chunks, as it’s gotten large enough to be a bit unwieldy.
To say that a situation is not wholly caused by enumerated factors is generally trivially true, so the question becomes how much connotation is intended, which means the question should probably be rephrased.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to ask if states of the world are justified when people disagree about the causes of those states of the world unless great care is taken to not be confusing. Those things can be addressed separately by just talking about causation and also asking what would be justified under a hypothetical set of facts.
I don’t know how to think of those things, particularly self respect, particularly since the frame is not just causation but justice.
Very true, and I must pedantically point out that I did not ask a question about how much connotation was intended. I suggested that the connotation of ‘harmless’ seemed careless to me. Literally and seriously careless, especially given my trivial research into the subject revealed that there is bias for male employees that employers, rationally, respond to.
I agree. I was trying to avoid this, because I mostly agree. I did not bring up the state of the world, and I seriously did avoid discussion of it in this thread, which apparently was also offensive? I am somewhat concerned about the state of the world, but I already take great care not to be confusing, and fail.
I do have some doubts about drawing conclusions from a hypothetical set of facts, unless those conclusions are testable and, in fact, tested. But I am philosophically inclined to talk hypotheticals long into the night...
Well, I probably care more about justice than I do just word choice. But I do far more for the cause of just word choice than any other. I will apologize for being elusive on more serious issues. I probably could have caused less confusion if I had not specifically tried to avoided answering questions about states of the world. Do you agree?
I find this a fascinating assertion. What other harms do you imagine might be unevaluatable?
Who would compensate them? Whose benefit is it for?
I do not really understand your questions. Can you define ‘who’ ‘them’ ‘whose’ and ‘it’? Would, compensate, benefit, is, and for I get.
Not sure if serious. Just in case you are, however: ‘them’ is referring to the people doing financially unrecompensed work in the home. ‘it’ is the financially unrecompensed work in the home. ‘Who’ and ‘Whose’ are up to you to define—that’s why they’re phrased as questions, dontcha know.
I am trying to be clear about the fact that the ONLY part of this thread I care about was the use of the word ‘innocuous’. All these other questions are good questions that people are asking, and answering, for themselves, and for other people, every day. Which I have no quarrel with.
I do not want to answer these questions for other people. This question:
is an excellent question that I actually do not want to answer, because noone has acknowledged that my point about the word innocuous is valid or valuable criticism. All the feedback I have seen so far dodges this small point to ask me much tougher questions about how individuals should be making these choices.
Why me? I make no assertions other than that the word ‘innocuous’ in that specific argument suggests that the reasons their is gender pay inequity is harmless. Because I am not sure that it is harmless.
I do not want to quantify the harm, but if you want me to take a stab at it, how about this:
Do some pay inequities cause stress? Does stress aggravate some mental disorders? (for the record, I am not trying to suggest that this harm is greater to either gender!)
Point the first—Now I’m confused. Is it that
or is it that “I do not really understand your questions.”? Or did my explanation allow you to understand that you didn’t want to answer, or...
Point the second—Hypothetically, if this:
is true, then gender pay inequities do have an innocuous explanation- namely, the above. Kaj_Sotala made no claims beyond that, certainly not to the extent of claiming the above statement is true in the real world.
This leads me to believe your point is not valid or valuable criticism. If you think I’m wrong, could you explain why?
Your explanation couldn’t possibly have cleared it up?
Well… I highly doubt it, both because the original ‘confusion’ seemed blindingly obvious to me and because
indicates to me something other than “Oh, so that’s what that was about!” In fact, it seems more along the lines of “Your clarification was not needed because I was missing the point intentionally.”
But in the interests of being as charitable as possible, I have edited my reply.
Than you for making clear that you do not agree that my point is valid or valuable criticism.
My objection to the word choice of harmless is based on my feelings, which I have not fully examined, that there may be harm.
Hypothetically, I agree with you.
I think I am having the most objection, in the statement you quote, with the phrase ‘mostly attributable’. I can think of several other reasons that can and do account for a gender-based inequity, all possibly innocuous. The one that springs to mind is something to do with women and negotiation of payscale, but as I look for resource that can explain what I mean by that more clearly than I have managed to, I came across another interesting theory on wikipedia, that I had never heard of before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_pay_for_women#Different_Studies_and_Economic_Theories
“They interpret their findings to suggest that employers are willing to pay more for white male employees because employers are customer driven and customers are happier with white male employees. They also suggest that what is required to solve the problem of wage inequality isn’t necessarily paying women more but changing customer biases.”
This difference does not seem so harmless. Do you agree?
I think this might be confusing pedanterrific because if I read you right above you don’t agree with him. I thought your position was similar to the one I made here that that explanation of pay inequality, even if true, is not innocuous because the reason why men and women make different choices about work and home life could be harmful social pressure, or some other reason that we don’t think people should have to face in an ideal world. But I could have misread you when you wrote this:
Mostly I was not sure what pedanterrific was arguing, but I asked him to clarify, and he did. I am often unintentionally funny to other people. Lately I am getting better at understanding what the ‘subversion of expectations’ I am committing.
I absolutely agree with your point, but I was not conscious of why the word innocuous bothered me when I made my comment, and I don’t actually know if I read your comments before this moment. I don’t always read every comment before I respond, and I don’t ‘notice’ consciously everything I do read. Confusions galore!
Yes, of course. That’s trivially true and not in dispute.
I still think you’re rather missing the point, however. I don’t see how it makes sense to object to the phrase ‘mostly attributable’ when that’s a premise of the hypothetical. Let’s look at the original comment in context:
That is, IF [the difference is mostly attributable to something innocuous], THEN [denying population-level differences seems harmful]. That’s all that was said. Kaj_Sotala never claimed the innocuous explanation was true.
Editeditedit: I apologize for my horrible social skills.
Your ‘horrible social skills’ are almost as funny as mine! no apologies necessary! And your edits are a vast relief to me personally.
let me just say that ‘like, really?’ comes across as dismissive of all my efforts to explain what I care about, in the context of my original remark, and why I care about the word ‘innocuous’ in the hypothetical statement.
I am generous to assume that are not trying to crush my will to respond with irony, and are seriously confused.
But it is more difficult for me to maintain this generosity of spirit after you have already dismissed something relevant to the hypothetical argument and my objection to the word ‘innocuous’ as ‘trivialy true and not in dispute’.
And I am totally willing to maintain at least a pretense of generosity of spirit, because I have plenty of experience with losing my generosity of spirit, and I know that it keeps growing back.
But I wasn’t faking any enthusiasm or bewilderment before I read your comment with those two apparently dismissive word choices. “trivial” and “like”.
Do you believe me?
When you say:
I’m reading you as actually being sincerely grateful but I’m guessing pedanterrific read you as being sarcastic.
...Oh. I think my sincerity detectors might be broken.
No, it set mine off too—I avoided the error only by paying attention to the tone and attitude of the rest of her comments (which make sarcasm coming from her [assuming her based on gender conventions around the phonetics of the handle] look very unlikely).
No, I am sure that they are normal, and partly because my mental problem which I have mentioned elsewhere, includes depression. In person, it is very hard to tell if a depressed person is sincere or sarcastic, I just wasn’t aware until now that this problem (I think call it ‘affect’?) is something I also ought to consider in a pure text situation.
In person I usually fake enthusiasm, but I am fortunately not that good at it. <--serious and funny, yet again. at least it was intentional.
I edited my previous comment to make my meaning clearer. Note that it’s only about that one quoted line.
Terminology confusion. See What is a trivial truth?. What I meant to say is,
describes a difference that is definitely not “harmless” no matter what the rest of your argument states. By “not in dispute” I meant “I agree with you, and was not aware that you thought we disagreed on this subject.”
OK, I think I finally understand.
What was said was:
One common explanation of harm and utilities is that the “real” or important utility function held by a human is that implied by the humans actions. If a human chooses A over B, that means to the human A has a higher value than B to the human. This runs us into problems, for example when humans choose B over C and C over A, but there is no agreed upon way to discuss the relationship of humans to utility functions. We just don’t know how to extract the human and cut the nonsense without cutting the human! This is despite extensively discussing extrapolate volition. One way to get people to actually choose consistently among A, B, and C is to teach them about this paradox, but let’s just say for our purposes here that it’s clearly not out of line to discuss people’s “true” preferences being something other than what they choose.
Vaniver: Ok: let’s suppose he intended the primary definition of innocuous, “not harmful.” If a choice is made voluntarily, then by the assumption of revealed preferences it is the least ‘harmful.’ If we forced women to choose with the same distribution that men do, then on net women would be worse off- i.e. harmed by our force.
Clarica: I think that calling the choice to spend more or less time doing financially unrecompensed work in the home an innocuous gender difference, is careless. The harms of the various choices have not been evaluated that well.
One issue is that language is flexible, and it is common to see “innocuous explanation” as a way of discussing the motives of a person causing the things the explanation explains, rather than according to the usual adjective-noun relationship where the adjective modifies the noun.
For example: a video teaching “how to fold a shirt” with the audio 50 decibels is a harmless explanation. The same video with the audio at 125 decibels is a harmful explanation.
No one argues that the explanation itself would have only good consequences, the discussion is instead what sort of harmlessness is meant instead. Whether the author’s intent is clearly that, if it is discovered that women’s actions alone cause the statistical difference, i) employers are doing no harm in the hypothetical case, or ii) if a similarly plausible interpretation is that no one is suffering harm, for had they chosen as men, there would be no disparity.
Context points to the first explanation as the best contrast with “discrimination”, what employers are allegedly doing, and what hypothetical evidence would clear them of, but it’s easy to see why someone intending the second point might have used the same words.
The sentence might be rewritten: “But if it is, then denying any population-level differences between men and women seems harmful, because it implies that something fully explained by innocuous behavior is because of discrimination.”
The principle of charity protects us in similar cases where we happen to only see one interpretation and it is the wrong one.
I feel like this is an accurate, thoughtful, and generous explanation of the confusion I have and the confusion I cause. If I could spend my few measly karma points upvoting this, I might!
After I read it, because it’s late, and I can not take it all in right now. And I’m grateful for the effort, and the clarity of the parts I already understand!
Why was this downvoted?
If I had downvoted it, it would be because I can’t really imagine reading “Who would compensate them?” and responding “Can you define ‘who’?” as a serious attempt at communication.
And you call yourself pedantic? There were a number of referents in my comment which could have applied, and while I usually feel at no disadvantage in a battle of wits, I have a mental problem that either renders me easily confused, or fully aware that I am not a mind reader.
This comment is supposed to be serious and funny. Can you guess which parts I think are funny, and why?
Ready for some meta-meta-irony? At the time I chose the username, I actually wasn’t aware that “terrific” is a word people commonly misspell.
At this point I’m afraid to try.
Actually, ‘this comment’ was self-referential. The comment you reviewed was intentionally serious, and unintentionally ridiculous. I get that a lot.
But ridiculous is funny, and I totally agree with your last judgement of funny, and wish I had noticed that it was funny, BEFORE I posted. I am trying to get comfortable with being accidentally funny.
I should really just stick with a pretense that everything funny I say is intentionally hilarious, instead of just occasionally patently ridiculous. Apparently.
When asked “who” would do something, asking for a definition of who is an interesting move.
Pedantic, but I think what everyone has been talking about is assigning the referent of “who”, not defining it.
You rang?
(That’s what lessdazed is talking about as well.)
Heh, didn’t mean to call you by name.
I know that’s what everyone was talking about—I was just clarifying because it can be read more strongly than it should be.
Apparently so. Can you explain why it is interesting?
Edited to add: I assume you may be trying to explain what is interesting about my comments in the more serious and complicated response you may still be working on, but of which I have only seen the placeholder. I’d say that I can’t wait, but I have already had to...
In the self-referentially intentionally funny comment I make above, I was absolutely serious about having a mental problem. And about being easily confused. And about being painfully aware that I am not a mind reader. Absolutely intentionally serious, and, for a change, intentionally funny at the same time. Irony is LOST on me. or everybody else, and I have no way of telling which!
Someone (Eliezer?) once said something like: if you tell me exactly what it is that an Artificial Intelligence can’t do, I can build an AI to do exactly that. If a person who believes in a fundamental difference at that sort of level between machines and animals can precisely define something, a computer can follow that definition.
It doesn’t work quite as well here. But if someone gives a good enough answer for their question of “who”, with exactly why an animal wouldn’t count, or a computer, or a corporation, they may make their question so complicated that it only has one answer or no answers as asked.
Ah. I am abnormally careful about the question of ‘who would’ do something. People often take my serious suggestions as playful, and vice versa. I no longer recommend a new hairstyle to anyone because I have given this advice three times, it was always taken, and I only liked the results without qualification once.
I may be paranoid, but I do not like to worry about this. <-- also intentionally funny. I am trying to not to worry about whether it is true. <-- Also funny.
I am taking medication for insomnia. Seriously.
So am I! But it’s not working very well, hence my being awake at this hour.
Heh, when arguing for the case that people should be careful with their wording, I’m challenged for a careless choice of wording. :-)
Innocuous in the sense of emerging from different-gendered people on average having different preferences and on average making different choices as a result. Me eating french fries every day, because I want to, is an innocous reason for eating french fries every day (though such behavior will probably cause health problems in the long term). Eating french fries every day because somebody pressures me into doing so, or because I genuinely can’t afford anything else, is a non-innocous reason.
I absolutely agree that there are many statistical differences between men and women, and trying to deny this is actually ludicrous, whether or not it is harmful!
However, I object to the word ludicrous, because while I agree that there are statistical (as well as biological and almost certainly evolutionarily-based cultural) differences between men and women, the assumption of harmlessness, based on that claim you’ve often heard, suggests that there is no bias involved other than personal choice. And personal choice is biased by so many other factors!
And, though I did not make this clear, I was not trying to suggest that the harm was one-sided.
The thing about bias was difficult for me to argue specifically until I explored the matter of pay inequity and the current state of research. Over the years I have heard a lot on the subject, which I do not remember that well.
Because though it is no trivial matter to me personally, personally, If I can’t identify a personal or cultural bias as actually causing me harm, I don’t get that excited about it. And frankly, if I haven’t identified what I should do about it, I try not to get exited about it if it is causing me harm. There are plenty of people in the world much more inclined than I to actually address the problems of gender-based pay inequities, which I think is a good thing.
It pretty much seems clear to me that a lot of men care more than women about getting a big pile of negotiable tokens. Statistical. Why women do less about getting a pile of negotiable tokens, I already understand. Some of this understanding of women may be visceral, or biological. I’m pretty sure most of it is pretty self-aware, or rational as well.
Why men care more I don’t understand as viscerally, but I am actually trying to understand better because I would like a bigger pile of negotiable tokens to play with. :)
Suppose lukeprog put it in the ancestral post.
“Clear from the context” seems like the heart of the matter, here. If it can be clear from the context that when someone says “men and women are equal,” then mean the most sensible interpretation, then it seems similarly clear that a generalization with neither “some” nor “all” specified should be assumed to mean “some,” not “all.”
That’s still insufficient context: to be able to give a definite answer, I’d need something like the paragraph the sentence was contained in.
Indeed. For what it’s worth, my prior for people misinterpreting “men and women are equal” is lower, though still not neglible, than my prior for people misinterpreting “all men want”. But again, depending on the context either interpretation for either sentence could be blindingly obvious, not obvious at all, or anything in between.
“Taboo” itself actually sounds about right, although it carries connotations of low value that may not be what you’re going for.
I misread what you meant. Sorrry for adding noise.
Yeah, I’m familiar with Rationalist Taboo, and I was looking for a substitute for “politically incorrect” fitting the description provided. “Taboo”, in its sense of “culturally forbidden” rather than its sense of “party game about avoiding words”, is what I came up with. Sorry if that lacked clarity.
There are several reasons to play Rationalist Taboo, though; I’d assumed that the grandparent wanted to drop the phrase mainly because of its political loading (which seems to be causing some problems here), not because of any implicit assumptions or ambiguity of definition that needs to get aired out. In which case brevity would be no sin.