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David_Gerard comments on Epistle to the New York Less Wrongians - Less Wrong
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Then you are unusual. This is a really standard ape behaviour effect.
It still triggers my "wtf" detector, but the single-sex rationalist group experiment may be worth running.
If we're not unusual, we wouldn't be in Less Wrong. We supposedly pride ourselves on being more sane than the average population, no?
"We are unusual" is not a licence to say "We have a significant chance of being unusual in this particular manner that just happens to be convenient to my argument."
What evidence were you thinking of that this rule does not apply to LessWrong readers in particular?
I wasn't primarily arguing that it does not apply, more that it might not apply.
As for reasons that it might not apply -- for starters, awareness of the issue enough to discuss it. Same way it works with awareness of all other biases.
Cutting out half the potential membership out of a rationalist group seems to me a high enough price to pay (especially given how few we are, especially given the impresison it'd give to outsiders) that we ought consider very carefully how big the downsides of gender inclusiveness really are, in the given situation. Not just say "standard ape behaviour".
That's certainly an excellent start. But awareness of and being able to cope with a bias doesn't make it go away - it takes considerable practice until you're not just compensating for it. The mind is a very thin layer on top of a chimp - the biases run deep.
Not just unusual, mistaken about a general claim. Humans (of either sex) behave differently in a mixed group. The social rules and payoffs are entirely different. Not behaving differently would be a mistake, even for those people who can emulate a different personality expression consistently in the long term with no adverse effects. If others are being more competitive you need to push back just to hold your ground.
Mind you I consider rationalist meetups a terrible place to meet women. Apart from being a hassle to deal with all the other guys (and annoying for the swarmed girls) the gender imbalance inflates social value. Basic economics ensures that for a given amount of social capital you can get a more desirable mate at other locations. There are plenty of intelligent and rational women out there that don't go to rationalist meetups and you encounter them when you are a breath of fresh air and a kindred spirit rather than one of a dozen walking stereotypes.Then there is the unfortunate tendency for people (of either gender) with inflated social value in a specific context to be kind of a pain in the ass.
Writing off that particular social domain could be considered lazy or otherwise low status but I prefer to consider it one of the MIN parts of the min max equation. While it is still necessary to behave differently in the mixed group and be somewhat more aggressive it frees up a bunch of background processing and eliminates a swath of social-political constraints. Although you still have to pay more attention to the approval of the scarce women. They have far more social power and influence than they otherwise would so can damage you by more than just their own personal disinterest. Not that social politics matters much at all for occasional meetups where there is not much of a hierarchy anyway. More of a work consideration.