Vladimir_M comments on Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych - Less Wrong
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Writing style can't be strictly separated from the choice of topic (or rather sub-topics addressed when writing on a given topic), and some of the most powerful clues come exactly from where these things blend into each other. Moreover, in interactive back-and-forth writing on forums and blogs, typical male and female behaviors and attitudes often quickly become apparent, just like in a live conversation, and are clearly detectable in writing.
Someone has already posted a link to a paper whose authors claim to have found measurable statistical differences between male and female styles, but I'm not sure how much (if at all) the usual human intuition relies on those specific clues.
But in any case, I don't see where exactly you disagree with my above diagnosis, given that it's discussing what I believe to be a fairly extreme and clear-cut case. Do you think Alicorn's style doesn't have the characteristics I described, or that such writing isn't statistically likely to come from men?
If you have some samples ready, I'd be curious to give it a try.
Two writing samples, one male and one female, from humanities journals: First:
Second:
Two excerpts from New York Times articles, one male and one female:
First:
Second:
Two excerpts from short stories, one male and one female.
First:
Second:
The humanities articles both use the same formal dry academic style, from which it's hard to say anything. The first one is much worse in terms of long-winded verbiage, but that doesn't say much. If I had to guess, I would toss a coin.
The Times articles are similarly written in a routine journalistic style (it reads like a telegram with some cliche phrases cut and pasted between the words), so again it's hard to say anything. (Also, from what I know, news articles are heavily edited and it's questionable how much individual style they preserve.) If I really had to guess, I would say the first is more likely to be female by an epsilon. Google confirms this is correct, but I admit I wouldn't bet any money on it. (On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if an experienced newspaper editor could guess much better.)
As for the short stories excerpts, well, that's some bad prose. The first one sounds to me a bit more feminine; I'd say it's something like a 60-40 guess. Googling these paragraphs, I see that I guessed right; admittedly, I wouldn't have bet very much money on this one either.
Well, she thinks explicitly and abstractly, like most people here, and I suppose that could be more common in men, but I don't think I've noticed anything especially male or female in her prose. I didn't notice an unusual lack or predominance of pronouns. (Actually I think Alicorn, more than most LessWrongers, tends to illustrate ideas with anecdotes about individual people, whether real or hypothetical. So that would mean more pronouns -- but then again, Eliezer has the same habit, and I don't know if that means you'd consider his writing feminine.)
I've been collecting examples of Eliezer being mistaken for female; so far I've got six, plus two people uncertain. (Someone suggested that it's because of his name, but I don't remember why.)
Numerous cases in Methods of Rationality, especially during the early days. It's as if they had priors suggesting that most Harry Potter fanfiction authors were female.
Aren't they? That's always been my impression. Although I can think of a lot of exceptions, like you, nonjon, and the guy who wrote Wastelands.
Someone mentioned that his first name could be misread as Eliza.
I didn't base my conclusion on pronouns at all. Maybe you missed my commend a few turns further up in the thread where I describe it in more detail.