nshepperd comments on Making your explicit reasoning trustworthy - Less Wrong

82 Post author: AnnaSalamon 29 October 2010 12:00AM

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Comment author: nshepperd 02 November 2013 07:06:31AM *  2 points [-]

But what if you take that to its logical conclusions concerning the male/female ratio of the top 0.1% smartest people, and then tell other people your calculated ratio?

You might be able to inoculate yourself against that by also calculating and quoting the conjugate male/female ratio of the lowest 0.1% of the population. Which is really something you should be doing anyway any time you look at a highest or lowest X% of anything, lest people take your information as advice to build smaller schools, or move to the country to prevent cancer.

Comment author: Vaniver 02 November 2013 10:48:12PM *  2 points [-]

You might be able to inoculate yourself against that by also calculating and quoting the conjugate male/female ratio of the lowest 0.1% of the population.

Why would that "inoculate" you? Yeah, it makes it obvious that you're not talking about a mean difference (except for, you know, the real mean difference found in the study), but saying "there are more men than women in prisons and more men than women that are math professors at Harvard" is still not gender egalitarian.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 November 2013 09:04:29AM 1 point [-]

Using that figures, 0.117% of males and 0.083% of females have IQs below 58.814, so if the sex ratio in whatever-you're-thinking-of is much greater than 1.4 males per female, something else is going on.