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Alicorn comments on What is missing from rationality? - Less Wrong
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Comments (260)
Whence this idea?
Rarity value. :)
Observation of a few weeks of commenting would make this apparent to anyone with a modest amount of social awareness. This is not something that should be surprising. I find my own popularity skyrocket when doing, for example, yoga. Being the scarce gender gives all sorts of power! :D
I honestly don't see it and think of myself as being fairly socially aware (though I suppose I wouldn't know if I was wrong about that). What power do women here have that men don't?
I'm not sure that higher status (as claimed in the OP) is quite the right way to phrase it but it seems to me that women are treated differently and I am also aware that I do it myself. Some observations:
There's probably others but I hope this gives you some things to consider.
Good points. I can see some of this. I also agree that "higher status" is not the way to describe it.
My experience, here and elsewhere, is that on average women are more interested in exploring ideas and less in getting into a debate. A very high percentage of comments here basically say "Some aspect of the post above this one is wrong" so often my default reaction to a reply to one of my comments is to take the reply as a reason why I'm wrong. But I've found this default fails more often when the replier is female. Relatedly, I do find myself being less belligerent and aggressive in replies to women, but I think this is mostly me just matching their tone instead of automatically altering mine when I see they are a woman.
Another aspect of this issue, is that debating between males probably triggers egos more readily than debating between males and females, so perhaps some men here are less aggressive when arguing with females because females don't trigger programming that evolved to guide us in battles for alpha male status, tribal supremacy and mating privileges. This might be one reason more female posters would help the community, egos care not for truth.
True. But this isn't really because women are special or unique among such groups, it's because we aren't even diverse enough to worry about other groups. There are at least enough women here to point out blind spots and excluding language. Not so for lots of other groups.
(I've felt like we do pretty well on neurodiversity issues, for similar reasons.)
Okay, I have seen this. Heh.
I have to agree with Morendil below, AFAIK there are only few women contributing here and at the same time there is definitively some concern about increasing this number, I remember that Eliezer wrote one post about this.
You see Alicorn, women are not the only group who is underrepresented, but I don't see the same concern regarding others.
I see a pattern here as in the real world "women need more fairness" and the end result is often that privileges are granted to them. Your post certainly contributed to that impression. It's just an impression, maybe I'm seeing it totally through the wrong lenses.
Eliezer says(sorry for another example regarding PUA but it's just so salient to me, and yes, unfortunately I feel the need to excuse myself, strange, isn't it? Why do I feel this need?) In the end, PUA is not something we need to be talking about here, and if it's giving one entire gender the wrong vibes on this website, I say the hell with it..
What is wrong with this sentence? What about those here who maybe want to discuss this? Shouldn't they be entitled to it? So there is more concern about a gender that is underrepresented(people that are not even here) but that could hypothetically contribute more members in the future as for those who are active or passive(lurkers) members in this community and have great interest and could possibly learn a lot from this topic. Alicorn I read your comments on how to make friends and there are similarities to PU.
And for those women/men who don't want to read about PU why not ignore the respective articles?
Edit: sorry for making my argument so PU centric. It's just something that was salient to me.
That's a very interesting point. I suspect it's because there's a lot of social pressure to assume that something is wrong if a group contains no or few women, while the lurkers don't have a political constituency.
I think it would be worthwhile for LW to be a more comfortable place for women, but figuring out how to encourage people who are already interested and would be valuable contributors to post is important even though it doesn't have obvious signaling value.
All I can say is that people don't necessarily work like that. If they don't have a strong preference for a social group, they aren't going to ignore things they don't like.
Also, a common reaction to PUA isn't "don't want", it's revulsion. There's a spread effect.
I think roland's point is that neither of these reactions are terribly appropriate for a community of aspiring rationalists. The conflict between this and the desire for broader appeal is really at the heart of the issue.
Personally I am an 'elitist prick', at least in the context of this site. I want to be able to freely discuss things that are not usually discussed because of revulsion reactions. Robin Hanson's fearless approach to this is what originally drew me to Overcoming Bias. I have plenty of real world friends and acquaintances to discuss safe topics with, the value to me of this site is the ability to discuss things that are not safe topics amongst normal people.
I haven't read the worst advocates. My negative reaction was based on reading material by average or possibly somewhat above average advocates.
I wonder what the common reaction to feminism is here. It's got at least as wide a range as PUA.
I broadly agree with the feminist project and think they have done more good than harm. I also have the following criticisms
Feminists too often mistake the complex, dynamic and context-dependent way status/power actually works for an oversimplified "patriarchy" where men as a class oppress women as a class.
This means feminism is much more sensitive to sexism against women and will routinely miss or play down sexism against men. This wouldn't be a problem except that feminism has sort of universalist aspirations; they're often more like a special interest group.
Feminism sometimes advocates taking political roles that can be oppressive, in much the same way gender roles can. This is partly why the movement has had trouble embracing transgendered people, BDSM, porn stars, sex workers etc. (And why the views of so-called 'radical' feminists still can't accept these groups)
Despite talking a lot about intersectionality, the core feminist institutions are more like a voice for Western, white, upper middle class women than for women as a whole. (A criticism I feel kind of like a dick making as I am all of those things+ a man, but it's true).
The movement isn't a good place for a young man to make his social home because as a woman's movement the place for men in it is in the background and the primary way the movement relates to men is in their defense of women from men (which is fine, politically, it just is a terrible way for a young man to relate to himself).
The thing is, there isn't a movement for gender equality. It seems to be very hard to motivate people to work on things without building in a group identity, and the group identity is us vs. them. Or have I spent too much time reading people who work that way, and there are alternatives I haven't seen?
I've wondered whether people have a bias towards bad ideas. Simple good sense isn't dramatic enough (or possibly doesn't offer enough opportunities for power seeking) to get attention easily.
Still, there's some good work being done, and I think of this as an effort to figure out how to live well with other people-- something which is surprisingly difficult.
Well, humans seem to be wired that way, so anyone you've met who works differently has done so deliberately and is very strange.
That sounds like 'radical feminism', and it's not so much a mistake of the 'feminism' as it is of the 'radical'. Marx did the same thing with class.
Feminists actually have a lot of complex, dynamic, and context-dependent reasons for focusing on sexism against women, ranging from being a radical feminist, to thinking sexism against women is the bigger problem that needs to be dealt with, to thinking that's what 'feminism' is about by definition and someone else should have the job of being sensitive to sexism against men. It's one reason "women's studies" programs in universities have been slowly converting themselves over to "gender studies", to drop the female-centric nature as it's no longer needed.
This has been internally considered a big problem for a long time, and now remains a problem only if you look at Western, white, upper middle class feminist institutions specifically.
Indeed. There are a lot of crazies out there. But I'd make the same case for just about any 'movement'.
Well, my sense is that the simple view is (a) what the radicals hold and (b) what those who don't get into the theory end up believing. It's kind of like how the Catholic church itself doesn't think God is necessary for morality but this view is common among evangelicals and unstudied Catholics.
Being a radical feminist isn't really a reason for doing something, what are the reasons for being a radical feminist? Anyway, my understanding of the radfem position is that there is no such thing as sexism against men, so yes, they're not going to be paying a lot of attention to sexism against men.
These reasons I'm pretty much fine with (and mostly agree with), which is why the problem isn't that they aren't good at noticing sexism against men but that they're aren't good at noticing sexism and take themselves to be giving a universal and unbiased perspective on gender issues. Feminism has problems being both the major vehicle for gender egalitarianism and the major vehicle for empowering women. The contradictions here were extremely minimal when feminism started out, but of course the more success feminism has the more this contradiction will come into play.
I agree that it has been a problem internally. And maybe I need to make this more clear: I basically have one foot in the camp and one foot outside it, so some (maybe even most) of my criticisms are things that feminists have said themselves. I'm not sure I know what you mean by "remains a problem only if you look at ...". I don't think there are many feminist institutions that identify themselves as Western, white and upper middle class. If you mean the institutions that are made up of mostly Western, white and upper class women then I suppose I agree with you except that these are the best funded, most influential and, for the rest of the culture, defining institutions for feminism. My experience reading non-white, poor and non-Western women on this subject suggests they still perceive many of the same problems that spurred the initial intersectionality critique.
I think my original comment made it clear why I think feminism is particularly problematic in this regard but if it didn't let me know and I'll clarify.
Yes, I'd have to grant you that, and I think the rest follows.
I get the impression it's moving in the opposite direction. The shrill radical sorts are being de-emphasized (not least since everyone noticed political correctness is silly), and as I noted "women's studies" is slowly transforming into "gender studies".
The major battlegrounds now, as I see them, are on exactly these sorts of questions. Is gender egalitarianism possible? Is it valuable? Are there factors which explain things like income disparity, and what, if anything, should we do about them?
But then, I haven't really been following the literature for a couple of years.
I see what you mean here. I think it's part of the same process. Equating gender egalitarianism with empowering women doesn't make quite as much sense as it once did. And for this reason radical feminists are losing influence, their message doesn't resonate like it used to. But at the same time aspects of the radical view haven been embedded in a lot of feminist 101 stuff (just think, for example, about the concept of the patriarchy) and mainstream/liberal feminism is having a really hard time getting away from that.
Personally my general reaction to feminism is negative but it appears to encompass a sufficiently diverse range of viewpoints that I find myself agreeing with some subset of those viewpoints. My impression is that rationality is not a strong feature of feminist thought but I recognize that I have probably been mostly exposed to the worst advocates.
The most convincing advocate of feminist ideas I have encountered is Kerry Howley. I think I can probably stomach feminist ideas she espouses because they are sugar coated in a libertarian wrapper. I'm not even sure that she would self-describe as a feminist but I feel that what sympathy I have for feminist ideas can in large part be credited to her writing.
I like Kerry Howley too. She does self-describe as a feminist. She's in the tradition of Voltairine de Cleyre.
I grew discouraged by feminism as represented by, say, the writers at feministe. There was a great deal of opposition to thinking the wrong thoughts. But you're right, it's an extraordinarily broad area, to the point of (almost) not being a useful term.
I think there is a parallel to the complaints about the PUA discussions here. I've often seen feminist ideas presented in a tone of hostility and misandry and embedded in a whole heap of background assumptions and beliefs that I do not share. I can read some of the same ideas from someone like Kerry Howley and appreciate that they are actually quite reasonable and compatible with my own views because I am not immediately on the defensive and looking for disagreement.
I also feel this way about criticisms of feminism. A lot of it comes from this entitled, resentful and misogynist place which aggravates me. I find that even among the most reasonable critics of feminism this attitude has a tendency to come out from time to time.
Is there anything in particular of Kerry Howley's that you recommend?
This might be interesting-- it's an analysis of the similarities between feminist descriptions of the patriarchy and libertarian descriptions of the state, with the suggestion that libertarians and feminists could learn quite a bit from each other.
Here's a few on libertarianism/feminism:
Libertarian Feminism versus Monarchist Anarchism
Feminism and Libertarianism Again
Does the Word Feminism Mean Anything
And on reproductive/sexual issues:
Notes on My Life Sentence of Buried Self-Negation
Trying Really Hard to Get Upset About Pornography
Might There Be a Connection Between Slut Shaming and Slut Jailing
The Myth of the Migrant
Thanks for the link, it's an interesting article. I don't find much to take issue with there - I generally agree with their analysis. Unfortunately I see little evidence of any progress towards reconciliation.
I find the focus on radicalism as a common trait interesting. I see parallels with coverage of the financial crisis where I basically agree with much of the analysis of people like Matt Taibbi or Simon Johnson and James Kwak on the root causes of the financial crisis but have a rather different idea of what needs to be done to fix the problem. The ideas of a feminist-libertarian alliance and a left-libertarian alliance have many commonalities.
Have you noticed that the people who are remembered as making the most accurate and useful observations about PUA are the same people who didn't cause the disgust reaction?
Also, remember that every post we promote is another possible first impression. I wouldn't want to join a community of people, mostly men, describing Women as an undifferentiated mass distinguished by an array of mental flaws to be exploited for personal gain - that's a sign of some hardcore irrationality, to make claims which are that self-aggrandizing and that easily refuted. (Easily refuted because they are hasty generalizations, I hastily add.)
Edit: I'll admit that I'm exaggerating the degree of bad rhetoric displayed here during the whole PUA flamewar, but the point about the hasty generalizations shouldn't be ignored - I know too many people who don't fit the stereotypes promoted in those discussions to view these stereotypes sympathetically.
I wouldn't want to join a community that did those things, or which uncritically praised a community that did. Still, I think that even if the seduction community were an undifferentiated mass of irrationality, it would be worth discussing here for the same reasons that we talk about religion and astrology.
Personally, when I see people being successful in a certain domain (or believing that they are successful), yet holding some obviously irrational beliefs, my interest is piqued. If these people are successful, is that despite their irrational beliefs, or could it be because of those beliefs? Could it be that some of the beliefs of PUAs work even though they are not true?
I don't understand why other rationalists wouldn't be wondering the same things, even when confronted with the negative aspects of pickup. As I've argued in the past here and here, pickup relates to many rationality topics:
Perhaps I've been committing the "typical mind fallacy" by assuming that just because these links between pickup and rationality are obvious to me, that they are also obvious to others.
We appear to have a topic that has a lot of connections to rationality, some of which have been discussed here with a lot of approval, judging by upvotes. There are also people who discuss this topic in a non-rigorous way that causes feelings of repugnance in many observers. In my view, the relevance of pickup to rationality and the philosophy of science is so great that we would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to discourage discussion of the topic. The solution is to discuss this topic in a rigorous way, and the connections to rationality made clear. When the topic is discussed in a non-rigorous and repugnance-causing way, the appropriate recourse is the reply button and the downvote button.
(Building on this earlier comment of mine.)
I appreciate your list of connections between PUA and rationality, because it's gotten me closer to working out why I don't see PUA as having a special connection to rationality.
I think it's because I find the connections you suggest generic. Most of them, I reckon, would hold for any subculture with a sufficiently active truth-seeking element, such as (picking a few examples out of thin air, so they may not be good examples, but I hope they communicate my point) poker, art valuation, or trading card gaming. Though I'd guess that each of these topics has links to rationality like those you mention, in depth discussion of them on LW would tend to feel off-topic to me.
This doesn't really relate to the more typical complaints about PUA that I see upthread - i.e. that some of the discussion of it grosses people out, and that it's inaccurately reductive - but I thought I'd add my two cents to convey my mental context for my last reply.
Thanks for giving additional context. I think you are correct that we have a difference of opinion. Personally, I would be absolutely thrilled to see a discussion on LessWrong of how poker, art valuation, or trading card gaming relate to rationality. Would these subjects not interest you, or is your worry that discussion of them would get too far off-topic to a degree that is bad?
I suppose delving very deep into those subjects could also feel off-topic to me if the connection to rationality was lost, yet I would be comfortable with whatever level of depth people more knowledgeable than me on those subject felt was necessary to elucidate the links to rationality. (And if other people were making truth-claims about the content of those disciplines, and those people often displayed bias or misunderstanding in either a laudatory or critical direction, I would be comfortable seeing those truth-claims evaluated. Even if debate about the merits or nature of a subjects gets away from the direct relationship of that subject to rationality, that debate itself may demonstrate applications of rationality to a controversial subject, which I like to see.)
Your mileage may vary, but I find that I learn in a "hands on" way, and attempting to apply rationality to a practical problem helps me attain a more abstract understanding. See the notion of Contract to Expand, where sometimes solving a specific sub-problem can be helpful for solving a larger, more general problem.
I would consider any subculture or discipline with a "sufficiently active truth-seeking element" to be excellent LessWrong fodder, as long as the discussion (a) was connected to rationality, or (b) addressed the nature of the subcultures and disciplines so that readers can know how they work well enough to evaluate their potential relationship to rationality (particularly if there is disagreement on that nature or relationship). Anyone else have feelings either way?
The second I think. (I feel about the same for topics in which I have shown interest, so it's not about my level of interest.)
If I wanted to force a conversation about a particular subculture or hot-button topic not obviously related to rationality, and I were called out on it, I could probably contrive a defensible list of ways my desired subject relates to rationality. For example, I took your list of bullet points for PUA and adapted most of them to race and IQ (a subject I'm more familiar with):
In spite of the connections to rationality just listed, I'd expect a discussion of race and IQ to flirt with the failure modes of (1) adversarial nitpicking of minutiae and/or (2) arguing about the politics surrounding the topic and not the topic itself. The first time I walked into this argument on Less Wrong, I felt I ended up in the first failure mode. When it came up again in this month's Open Thread, the poster starting the discussion seemed to want to discuss the politics of it, and I didn't see the resulting subthread as casting new light on rationality.
I say this even though threads like that do often have people making and evaluating truth-claims; I just don't count that kind of thing as 'real' rationality unless it could plausibly make a rationality lightbulb go off in my head ('Ooooohhh, I never got Eliezer's exposition of causal screening before, but this example totally makes it obvious to me' - stuff like that). I can find intelligent arguments about various subcultures and issues elsewhere on the internet - I expect something else, or maybe something more specific, from LW.
This doesn't mean I don't/can't/won't learn about rationality in a hands on way - applying what you learn is how you know you've learned it. Still, on LW I expect discussions presented as 'here is a general point about rationality, demonstrated with a few little examples from my pet issue' to stay on topic more effectively than if they're presented as 'here is my pet issue with a side serving of rationality,' and I expect that whether or not I can draw abstract connections between my pet topic and rationality.
Hmmm. I've written a lot here because I don't feel like I'm adequately communicating what I mean. I suppose what I'm thinking is something like a generalization of 'Politics is the Mind-Killer' - even things tangentially related to rationality can mind-kill, so I'm wary about what I label on-topic. Quite likely more wary than whoever's reading this.
On a side note, I tried profiling (albeit crudely) a thread about a hot topic to find out how well it focused on relevant data and the elements of rationality discussed on LW. I picked this month's Open Thread's subthread about race and IQ because it wasn't very long and I posted in it, so I had some idea how it progressed. On each comment I ticked off whether it
with the rationale that comments that did any of these were more likely to be rationality-relevant than those that didn't. (I also tried ticking off which comments were mostly focused on politics and which weren't, but I couldn't do that quickly and fairly, so I didn't bother.) Here's my data for anyone who wants to check my work.
The subthread has 74 comments: 13 mentioned evidence, 3 made a testable prediction, 10 explicitly made connections to LWish heuristics and catchphrases, and 50 did none of these. Those 50 comments had a mean score of 2.7; the 24 comments that mentioned data/predictions/rationality tropes had a mean score of 2.4.
That suggests that not only were the overtly rationality-ish comments outnumbered, but they scored more poorly. I wouldn't want to generalize from this quick little survey, but I do wonder whether the same trend would show up in arguments about feminism, PUA, global warming, 9/11, or other subjects that can be controversial here.
Regarding the ratios of comment types have you compared that at all to subthreads about other topics, possibly less controversial ones? Without some idea of the usual level for an equivalent LW conversation about a less controversial topic, it is very hard to evaluate this data.
I'm not sure incidentally that I agree with your breakdown of comments. For example, you include the comment that started off the conversation as in none of the categories. Even just asking a worthwhile question should be worth something. And since this comment was at +17, even just by removing it we already substantially alter the average score of the 50 nones. The score goes from 2.7 to 2.4. This also illustrates another issue which is that if even a single comment can cause that sort of change then it doesn't seem like this sort of data is statistically significant. Frankly, after realizing that, I'm not that inclined to check the rest of your data since that already puts the two at both 2.4 on average.
The fact that it seems like this comment itself would be put into the none category when I've made criticisms of the interpretation of evidence suggests that your break down isn't great. (Please forgive the mild amount of self-reference.)
Piling on to this excellent comment, I have a more specific interest in "how scientific is NLP".
That is indeed a good question that I don't know the answer to. Though it has been my impression that some of the ideas in NLP are parasitic on mainstream psychology. For example, "anchoring" seems related to classical conditioning.
I think it is a species of logical rudeness to judge an idea by its worst advocates. I'm sure any atheists who have been reminded that Hitler was an atheist can sympathize.
Neil Strauss (author of The Game) recently made some good points:
I think we're talking past each other. I'm not talking about judging the ideas, I'm talking about judging the worst advocates. Those people are the ones who cause the revulsion, and we as a community need to deny them the spotlight when they act up until they learn better. Otherwise the community comes off as not being a rationalist community, and aspiring rationalists who might be interested walk away.
I don't even think we've been doing a bad job overall. But it's a job we're doing, not something that happens automatically.
And this is where differing perceptions are probably causing issues. I haven't seen any posts here from anyone who is anything nearing the worst advocates, but then I've hung around places where these topics are discussed much more confrontationally. I've seen nothing I deem worthy of censorship from the advocates, even the 'worst', but I have seen examples of what I view as completely unacceptable over-reaction, revulsion and guilt tripping from a small but vocal minority who claim offense.
I am very unsympathetic by nature to people who claim the right to block any conversation that they personally find offensive. My natural reaction to such people is to become more offensive, which while it has some merit from a game-theoretic standpoint is generally not conducive to social decorum so I make an effort to restrain such impulses. So for me, those people are the ones who cause revulsion, and we as a community need to deny them the spotlight when they act up until they learn better. Otherwise the community comes off as not being a rationalist community, and aspiring rationalists who might be interested walk away. So far people who share your perceptions seem to carry the support of the majority but I think there is a significant minority that share my perceptions.
Despite some of the rhetoric flying around at the time, I don't think anyone involved made that sort of claim. It was rather more like "I find this sort of thing offensive" and "Maybe we should listen to him, since lots of people probably would be turned away by that sort of thing, and the offensive bits aren't really necessary."
See Eliezer's contribution, Of Exclusionary Speech and Gender Politics. Nutshell: We should avoid doing things that make people feel excluded, and that includes being sensitive and not being all feministy. So basically we want both of the potentially-interested groups you've identified to stay.
ETA: Surely I've overstated my case. Eliezer did suggest that he didn't think it would be a problem to ban PUA if it bothered people; the main idea is that PUA isn't that important of a topic in the grand scheme of things, so whatever.
It's not an either-or proposition, I think. I'll freely concede that I haven't been particularly sensitive to those sharing your revulsion for political correctness*, but it would be a mistake to offend either group to flatter the other. It's possible - it's even been done here - to hold these discussions in a way which is fair to both sides.
It's just hard. Which is why it's usually a bad idea to go there.
* I apologize if my terminology is incorrect.
Agree with first quoted sentence. Disagree with second one.
In my view, LessWrong should be a place where we rationally attempt to discuss subjects that would be too controversial to discuss anywhere else. On LessWrong, we can hold arguments in such discussions to higher standards of scrutiny than anywhere else.
I don't agree with the "it's hard, so we should give up" approach to discussing controversial subjects on LessWrong. Controversial, mind-killing subjects are exactly where rationalist scrutiny is most needed.
Your terminology is fine. The asymmetry that disturbs me is that while 'political correctness' annoys the hell out of me I'm not demanding for it to be a banned topic of conversation to avoid offending my delicate sensibilities. I don't consider the causing of offense by particular views or topics to be a valid reason to avoid them. Note that this is different from discussing them in a deliberately offensive manner. I generally dislike an unnecessary impolite or aggressive tone to discussions but objecting to an entire topic is going too far in my opinion.
If we are still having this discussion could you link to a couple examples of the posts that you object to so much? I'm trying to figure out whether I missed something, or how similar my perceptions are to yours.
I can't point to any specific examples.
Agreed. Still my point remains, to what extent should a group stop doing certain activities to accommodate hypothetical future members who might or might not join even if the group ceases doing said activities.
A fair question, though it's worth noting that those particular activities were also annoying some current members.
Indeed - at the time, at least two of the site's "top contributors" were specifically put off by it.
I actually don't see why lurkers as lurkers should have a political constituency. They don't contribute to the site by definition. Any given lurker is welcome to become a poster and then they will be part of their own political constituency.
I wasn't saying that they should, just that they don't.
Even so, it's possible that they should have a constituency of sorts if you want the site to grow.
If that is the case, then it certainly is not because of a general "Everyone is entitled to discuss whatever they want here" principle, as such a principle does not exist. The site's purpose is rationality, and anything that serves that goal is allowed, and anything that does not is suspect.
Did you even read the OP? He specifically mentioned the subject of mastering interpersonal relationships and I was answering to that.
-edit-
The thing is, that's an odd response. Look at the flow here:
Roland sez: should we really give up discussing PUA just to make women feel more comfortable?
Kaiokan sez: I don't expect that many women on the site in the first place, because of XYZ, where XYZ is a fairly ambitious claim that's likely to be disputed in itself.
Without XYZ, I think most of us, men and women, could agree on the basic point you're trying to make, that is, we expect more men than women on the site. So why bring up XYZ? It doesn't actually have a function in your argument other than the fact that you like it and you found an excuse to bring it up. (I'm often guilty of this too, but I suspect it's bad logical hygiene and I'm trying to get rid of those habits.)
As for the actual question... well, it depends if we can trust ourselves to handle it well. Apparently the convention around here is that we don't bring up topics that totally overwhelm rationality, because we're trying to practice rationality. But ultimately we do live in a world where hot-button subjects exist and we have to respond to them one way or another, and potentially not just by avoidance. For somebody from my environment, and it seems for many others, the topic of PUA is a challenge. Maybe a fun challenge. But possibly one we can't handle well (yet).
---edit---
You need to back up that particular non-obvious statement with the reasons which are currently convincing you of that statement, yes. Your response to research suggesting that the factors you cite are nonpermanent would be appreciated.
Thank you for not wanting to sound intolerant. As a rule, though, if you don't know how to say what you want to say without disclaiming it, you have a lot of work to do before saying it.
---edit---
That's not what I meant - your disclaimer was a warning from yourself that you should not be confident that you have avoided saying something intolerant. In such a case, simple editing is rarely the solution; if you don't understand the situation enough to be justly confident to start with, you don't understand it well enough to confidently make edits.
In this case, you have repeated a number of strong claims about sex differences without acknowledging any of the evident cultural factors - it is these specific features of your comment which are likely to make you appear intolerant, and they are (ironically) more prominent after your edit.
I think you are being a little unfair. He stated two fairly well established psychological facts (greater variance in intelligence and differences on the empathizing–systemizing scale), a personality tendency with decent ev-psych support (lone-wolf) and a reasonable extrapolated hypothesis from these tendencies (male dominance of computing/math/engineering disciplines). He then made a clearly flagged personal prediction based on these observations that we are unlikely to ever see a high percentage of female commenters here given the subject matter.
Any interpretation of a nature/nurture assumption is coming from you. He merely noted the differences and did not express an opinion on the reason for them. We can do better than the Larry Summers Harvard debacle here. Address the evidence for the claims or the specific reasons why a different tone would be preferred rather than engaging in pre-emptive censorship.
Apologies for the delay - this is not a field in which i have particular knowledge, and so it took me some time to track down an appropriate reference (h/t Jezebel blogger Anna North): Janet S. Hyde and Janet E. Mertz, "Gender, culture, and mathematics performance", PNAS, vol. 106 no. 22, June 2, 2009 8801-8807, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0901265106.
Thanks, this is the sort of specific evidence I was hoping for. I'll take a look.
Intelligence is a vague, multi-faceted word. Whenever intelligence is mentioned in a comparative or quantitative way, care should be taken to indicate exactly which dimension of intelligence is being measured. Since the dimensions of intelligence probably aren't well parametrized, it would be sufficient to indicate the particular test that was being used. Otherwise, the biases that sneak in are less traceable. In experimental science, it is a really good norm they've established to always include the detailed context and methodology of the experiment, so current researchers can estimate and predict biases and figure out 'what went wrong' when they get a different result under different conditions.
For example, if it was a standard IQ test that determined the variance in male intelligence, I have an understanding of the biases in those tests, and if it was comparing income, I have an understanding of the biases there. When it comes to experimental studies in social science and psychology, I always weight their result low compared to my own observations of a lifetime, because if I've observed anything, I've observed that things are complex, and I know we haven't developed tools to handle this complexity.
Yes, the world is a complex place. Yes, any finding in the social sciences may not show what it purports to show due to biases and flaws in the methodology. We can do better here than simply ignoring all evidence on the basis that it might be wrong however. Remember that 'belief' in some idea is not a binary thing, 0 and 1 are not probabilities, all beliefs are open to future revision in either direction in light of new evidence. A rationalist should be trying to refine their degree of belief by asking questions and doing further research.
Greater variance in male performance is both a widely observed phenomenon in many domains and something that you would expect to see given the differing selection pressures on males and females. It need not be an emotionally laden observation since it is not inherently implying that either gender is 'better' than the other in some way, it is merely an observed regularity of our world.
So if you dispute the evidence for greater variance in male performance generally and in intelligence measures specifically please address your criticisms to specifics. What specifically are the biases in standard IQ tests or measures of income that you have an understanding of and how do they act to produce misleading results? What other data (experimental is preferable but anecdotal is admissible for consideration) do you have to offer on this issue? This is a perfect example of a question we can collectively apply our rationality to in order to improve the accuracy of our probability estimates.
Or don't. Just say 'I don't believe any of this evidence should influence my beliefs because the world is complex and evidence can be wrong' if you choose. But do not pretend that that is either a noble or rational stance to take on an issue.
I agree that we can do better.
I have a thought on these studies that give evidence for unequal intelligence between the sexes (or races.) They can have very scary, emotional connotations. They used to scare me. Then I thought about it a bit and asked "What am I scared of?" And I realized that I was scared that, if these genetic inequalities were real, I'd have to be a sexist or racist.
But think for a minute. Suppose the "worst-case scenario" were true. Suppose women really did have worse brains than men, for genetic reasons. What would be my logical response?
It occurred to me that the only responsible way to react to such news would be to treat it as a disease to be cured. And then start working on biology to fix it. I am not an anti-Semite because I'm aware that Tay-Sachs disease affects Ashkenazic Jews.
If there were genetic differences between sexes or races, I'd be less likely to favor affirmative action at the college or employment level, because it wouldn't be effective. The injustice would be biological, not social, and it would be best fixed biologically.
The real reason people are scared of genetic differences is the naturalistic fallacy. Just because an inequality is natural doesn't mean it's good. If some people have the misfortune to have low IQ's for genetic reasons, and if higher IQ would make their lives better, then shouldn't we be working on fixing that?
(Note: this is not an argument that IQ differences exist or are meaningful. I'm just arguing that if they turn out to be real, there are non-sexist, non-racist ways to deal with that reality. I'm of the belief now that knowing what reality is like can never be intrinsically immoral.)
You read way too much into my comment!
The issue seems to be, in your misreading of my comment, that you expect I feel emotional about gender issues, and perhaps feel threatened indiscriminately by any statements about gender and intelligence. But I don't. It happens that I'm not generally concerned about gender issues and am not on the look out to defend them. Personally, I don't anticipate feeling threatened by any statements that might be true about gender.
On issues on which I am emotional (they exist), I feel much less threatened by statements if they are either clearly personal opinions/impressions or scientific statements that carry the specifics with them. I feel that if the specifics are there, I can trust that there is enough information to vet the statement, if needed, in the present or the future, and thus prevent inappropriate application. If the statement is a personal opinion/impression, we know the appropriate application of that.
So if the point is to discuss issues "rationally", without stirring up emotions, then it would be a good norm to always signal clearly whether a statement is a personal opinion/impression OR a scientific claim. If the latter, it is the careful inclusion of the methodology/context that makes it scientific.
See the Deary study of practically the entire population of Scottish 11 year-olds, which found greater male variability. The introduction of the study also discusses the history of the greater male variability hypothesis, and some of the evidence for it.
There is a cross-cultural study which found that males have higher variance in most populations, but females do in others. (Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that the difference is "cultural," though it could.) I will try to dig it up. Even so, greater male variability is a robust finding.
This does not seem like an apt reply to the above. This:
Is a particularly bad straw man. "I weight their result low" seems to be doing the sort of thing you advocate, as opposed to "no influence".
Do you disagree with the general stance presented, that the methodology/context of an experimental study matters, and these things should be taken into consideration when evaluating their effects on our beliefs?
Don't worry, I also have a terrible style. Just continue practicing, it takes a lot of time to become a good writer. Eliezer has written some posts touching on this subject.
I wonder if we should focus so much on the gender inequality. Nowadays everything seems to operate under the assumption that gender equality in numbers is a desideratum. I don't know if we should operate under this assumption unless we want to signal that we are conforming to the Zeitgeist.
If the site's purpose is rationality should it matter if there is a majority of males? I agree of course that females should be welcome and treated with respect, but the same applies to anybody. Midgets should also be welcome and treated with respect as should people who were born in airplanes over the Atlantic. And don't forget the people with green eyes and black hair, they too deserve respect.
This was the issue. The way PUA was being discussed made some women here feel unwelcome and disrespected.
Of course not. No one expects there to ever be anything but a majority of males. But the community would be better off if the ratio wasn't as skewed as it is. Some reasons:
Gender diversity means experience diversity and neuro-diversity, these things let us catch blind spots. The fact that we are men means there will be experiences we aren't aware of and it is helpful to have people with those experiences around to fill in the gaps. This of course goes for all kinds of socially significant diversity.
Women, on average, appear to be less confrontational and aggressive in their discussions here (I don't know if this is learned or innate). People with such demeanors are good to have around as the rest of us appear to get our egos caught up in arguments a lot.
One ostensible goal of this site is to help spread rationality. Alienating large segments of the the potential convert pool is a bad idea.
The general consensus appears to be that Less Wrong would be better if it were larger, it speeds up our hypothesis generation capabilities and decreases the chances of us missing things. Again, alienating large segments of the potential commenter pool is a bad idea.
Can we please move past this simplistic anti-political correctness attitude where we pretend deep social categories are equivalent to eye color?
What I don't understand is why we're having this meta-level discussion again. All these points have been made before and whatever has been said about a ban, it is quite clear that anyone can talk about PUA without negative consequences provided they do so in a respectful manner, take into account differences between women etc. Is it that important that our discussions about what women find attractive offend women?
I'm not sure how this would come off as intolerant, though my detector for that stuff has been off the last couple of days.
Anyway, whether or not you're right pretty much depends on what you mean by "substantial". Off the top of my head I can think of five or six female regulars. That isn't too shabby. There aren't that many regulars, period. Considering this is (a) the internet, and (b) a place where a bunch of computer nerds talk about science and philosophy I think that's actually quite good! It would be nice if the ratio is was a little better, but I don't think anyone here actually thinks it would ever get past 1:4. And I think we're okay with that. As long as it doesn't become like 1:100.