Woah. Totally did not know Hofstadter wrote that (the first two times I read it I didn’t know he was a person I should care about).
I also noticed I was confused when I read the intro to GEB and it talks extensively about his use of primarily male characters. I was impressed but surprised that someone would care that much to disclaim it.
Good that is an actual argument instead of just assuming that what 5 or 10% or 20% of the actual viewership will get are offended by standard language use enough for this to be worth spending effort to rerecord the video.
If using gendered pronouns messes with actual rationality, then we should totally do away with them.
There are extremely-low-cost ways to avoid male-gendered-defaults—everything from alternating pronouns to repeating the antecedent to using “they” as a singular. At almost no cost, and with potentially significant upside, it’s an easy win. Easy wins are good.
At least one man has concluded that defaulting to male third person pronouns made it more difficult for him to think clearly.
The universal male pronoun contributes to availability bias.
Woah. Totally did not know Hofstadter wrote that (the first two times I read it I didn’t know he was a person I should care about).
I also noticed I was confused when I read the intro to GEB and it talks extensively about his use of primarily male characters. I was impressed but surprised that someone would care that much to disclaim it.
Good that is an actual argument instead of just assuming that what 5 or 10% or 20% of the actual viewership will get are offended by standard language use enough for this to be worth spending effort to rerecord the video.
If using gendered pronouns messes with actual rationality, then we should totally do away with them.
There are extremely-low-cost ways to avoid male-gendered-defaults—everything from alternating pronouns to repeating the antecedent to using “they” as a singular. At almost no cost, and with potentially significant upside, it’s an easy win. Easy wins are good.