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.”
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.”