If less than 4% of us are women, I am quite willing to call that a minority. Would you >prefer me to call them an excluded group

I'm talking about the Western memplex whose members employ uses the word minority when describing women in general society. Even thought they represent a clear numerical majority.

I was suspicious that you used the word minority in that sense rather than the more clearly defined sense of being a numerical minority.

Sometimes when talking about groups we can avoid discussing which meaning of the word we are employing.

Example: Discussing the repression of the Mayan minority in Mexico.

While other times we can't do this.

Example: Discussing the history and current relationship between the Arab upper class minority and slavery in Mauritania.

This (age) also doesn't bother me, for reasons similar to yours.

Ah, apologies I see I carried it over from here:

How diverse is Less Wrong? I am under the impression that we disproportionately >consist of 20-35 year old white males, more disproportionately on some axes than >on others.

You explicitly state later that you are particularly interested in this axis of diversity

However, if we are predominately white males, why are we?

Perhaps this would be more manageable if looked at each of the axis of variability that you raise talk about it independently in as much as this is possible? Again, this is why I previously got me confused by speaking of "groups we usually consider adding diversity", are there certain groups that are inherently associated with the word diversity? Are we using the word diversity to mean something like "proportionate representation of certain kinds of people in all groups" or are we using the world diversity in line with infinite diversity in Infinite combinations where if you create a mix of 1 part people A and 4 parts people B and have them coexist and cooperate with another one that is 2 part people A and 3 parts people B, where previously all groups where of the first kind, creating a kind of metadiversity (by using the word diversity in its politically charged meaning)?

I specifically brought up atheists as a group that we should expect to over-represent. I'm also not hunting for equal-representation among countries, since education obviously ought to make a difference.

Then why aren you hunting for equal representation on LW between different groups united in a space as arbitrary as one defined by borders?

mentioning the western world as the source of the scientific method.

While many important components of the modern scientific method did originate among scholars in Persian and Iraq in the medieval era, its development over the past 700 years has been disproportionately seen in Europe and later its colonies. I would argue its adoption was a part of the reason for the later (lets say last 300 years) technological superiority of the West.

Edit: I wrote up quite a long wall of text. I'm just going to split it into a few posts as to make it more readable as well as give me a better sense of what is getting up or downvoted based on its merit or lack of there of.