I think the point is that there are multiple factors which all reduce the chances. In startup founding, you need multiple similar people; in LW browsing, you need multiple personal characteristics. Maybe 90% of women can handle the disagreeableness; maybe an independent 90% can handle the male-style-writing; maybe another 90% is unswayed by cultural gender differences; maybe another 90% are unaffected by a female genetic predisposition against reasoning (I’m just running down Eliezer’s list), and so on.
A LW commentor who is female would be in the subset of women who is in all these groups. (Just with these few factors, we’re down to something like only 60% of women are ‘eligible’ for LW membership to begin with!)
Sure, that all makes sense, but an LW commentor who is male would also have to fall into multiple subsets.
No, remember that our various sets are already biased towards males (obviously males don’t mind ‘male-style-writing’). The point of my comment is that a few small biases can quickly multiply up. If on all these factors, the males are at 95% where the females are at 90%, then we only need like 10 factors before we would expect twice as many males than females based just on those factors alone and ignoring any feedback or network effects.
Why we mostly have male-style-writing, or why there might be a female genetic predisposition against reasoning, are all different issues one would expect different answers to.
(That there are such gender differences isn’t too terribly surprising to me, personally—finding that males and females are exactly the same on all these factors would be like finding that all of humanity is 100% genetically homogeneous, and that there’s no truth to, say, the Japanese having a low tolerance for alcohol or some groups being lactose-intolerant or Africans being disposed to sickle-cell anemia.)
I think the point is that there are multiple factors which all reduce the chances. In startup founding, you need multiple similar people; in LW browsing, you need multiple personal characteristics. Maybe 90% of women can handle the disagreeableness; maybe an independent 90% can handle the male-style-writing; maybe another 90% is unswayed by cultural gender differences; maybe another 90% are unaffected by a female genetic predisposition against reasoning (I’m just running down Eliezer’s list), and so on.
A LW commentor who is female would be in the subset of women who is in all these groups. (Just with these few factors, we’re down to something like only 60% of women are ‘eligible’ for LW membership to begin with!)
Sure, that all makes sense, but an LW commentor who is male would also have to fall into multiple subsets.
The question isn’t “why are so few members of the total human population on LW?” but “what’s with the different proportion of males and females?”
No, remember that our various sets are already biased towards males (obviously males don’t mind ‘male-style-writing’). The point of my comment is that a few small biases can quickly multiply up. If on all these factors, the males are at 95% where the females are at 90%, then we only need like 10 factors before we would expect twice as many males than females based just on those factors alone and ignoring any feedback or network effects.
Why we mostly have male-style-writing, or why there might be a female genetic predisposition against reasoning, are all different issues one would expect different answers to.
(That there are such gender differences isn’t too terribly surprising to me, personally—finding that males and females are exactly the same on all these factors would be like finding that all of humanity is 100% genetically homogeneous, and that there’s no truth to, say, the Japanese having a low tolerance for alcohol or some groups being lactose-intolerant or Africans being disposed to sickle-cell anemia.)