= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
wedrifid comments on Call for Anonymous Narratives by LW Women and Question Proposals (AMA) - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (364)
The unbalanced gender ratio in the atheist/skeptic/rationalist spheres (and the science/programming spheres, more generally) has negative effects on both genders. Women may feel objectified and marginalized, while men may feel romantically frustrated and hopeless. These reactions can lead to mutually defeating behavior. Typical responses - for women, abandoning those spheres; for men, acting inappropriately toward women - only widen the gender divide and make the problems worse.
I am interested in working toward better outcomes for both genders. My question for the women of LW is this: what specific advice do you have, for either gender, that you think will improve the situation? How confident are you that your advice will be helpful, and on what evidence do you base that confidence?
For men: Consider the women in the subculture "male for all social purposes" and seek romantic interests elsewhere.
I've only ever seen one case of a man who'd previously had a rationalist mate going back to nonrationalist mates afterward. The reason why the gender skew of our culture is a mating problem for men is that once you go rationalist you don't go back.
"Go to the physics department, find a woman you consider attractive, point her at HPMOR, and see if anything develops" sounds like more useful advice to me.
For (straight) men who insist on dating externally, asking a woman whether she would prefer a certainty of $500 or a 15% chance at $1 million seems likely to be a surprisingly good filter on potential mates. I didn't believe it either as first, but I've verified that many women, and in at least one case a female grad-student doing advanced math homework, says she would rather have the $500; while every woman I've tested inside our community - regardless of her math/science/economics level or her ability to talk glibly about explicit rationality - takes the 15% chance at $1M with a puzzled look and 'Is this a trick question?'
I have a (male) friend who answered $500 to this question. He teaches math (at the middle school level). It was a sad day.
Of course it's not just women! Women (outside the community, that is) are more likely to respond that way than men, but that's from a study on both risk aversion and hyperbolic discounting which showed that "Women can't take small risks and men are creatures of the now", with both effects diminishing as scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test increased.
I now wonder what would happen if I asked a man on the street to choose between $500 immediately or $1 million in 10 years (= 113% annual interest) - a version that extreme wasn't in the original study, just the extreme version of the risk-aversion Q. I wouldn't expect it to work, but then I wouldn't have expected it to work with risk aversion either!
I would expect that to depend a great deal on their confidence that you would in fact provide $1 million in ten years.
Likewise, the original question depends on their confidence that you're not overestimating/lying about the probability they will get the $1,000,000.
Yes. EY's introduction of "immediately" is what changes the equation for me.... I might well choose $500 in my hand right now over the promise of $1million in ten years, whereas I probably would not choose the promise of $500 in an hour over the promise of $1 million in ten years.
Would you also choose $1 million in ten years over $1000 in an hour?
And would you choose $1000 in an hour over $500 right now?
If the answer to both questions is yes (and I think both are reasonable) then we may have an example of circular preferences on our hands.
Probably.
Ooh. That's a toughie.
I suspect in practice it depends critically on all kinds of subliminal aspects of the situation... that is, which way I choose can probably be manipulated by the exact choice of words, what the person is wearing, yadda yadda. My guess is that I choose $500 right now for most versions of the choice, but $1000 for a substantial minority.
Single point of evidence- I would have to fight my inner self REALLY hard to choose the 15% chance at a million. (Inner turmoil!! Logic says Do Thing A, but I really Don't Want To!!).
OTOH, the million in ten years is intuitively obvious to me and choosing it would be what I would've done even PRE-rationality.
I would be curious to know how people answer given the opportunity to spend $500 on a $1M/15% lottery ticket.
That depends a lot on the nature of the lottery. If it was a typical lottery that for some reason had a 15% chance to win, a $500 ticket would not be worth it as all, since thousands of people would win and split the prize amongst themselves and the expected value would be much less than you would assume at first glance.
If it's just "spend $500 for a 15% chance of gaining a million," though, I'd take as many tickets as I could get!
Yes, that version seems much less problematic, and I think the average person might be in favor of buying infinity tickets.
I might actually not want to buy one. (When no loss is involved I take the chance at a million.) I might want to buy five, or go in together with several friends on one.
(instantaneous reflex activated)
What if I gave you $500, then asked you if you wanted to spend it on the ticket?
I'd also like to know whether some unexpected expense, like needing a $500 dental crown, would change your mind about accepting the free $500 instead of the free ticket.
If you gave me $500 and then immediately alerted me to the availability of a ticket you'd probably catch me before the $500 entered the "my money" mental bin, because I'd still be a little confused about why you randomly handed me $500 and expect to have to give it back.
Risks of medium-sized unexpected expenses like that are already factored into how conservative I am about handling money on this scale, so I don't think that would have an effect.
I have dated rationalists and gone back. Rationalist subculture affiliations count very little to me. It doesn't make people all that rational and does make people more annoying when they are, in fact, being irrational. I do enjoy having some shared interests with those I date but honestly I'd assign more 'attraction' points for a fitness obsession, enjoyment of games (board games, cards) or, say, medical knowledge than "being a rationalist".
That sounds like an argument that one shouldn't date a rationalist even when an attractive option is willing and available. You don't want to permanently degrade your future options for (possibly) short term pleasure with what is immediately before you.
If you say so yourself!
I don't know, if a woman had tried that with me she'd have found I didn't make it through to the end (didn't read the last batch after the pause before it). And she'd find that I argue with the author, rejecting some of the "rationalist" morals he promotes in the chapters that get preachy. If she is too enarmored of the work it could disqualify me!
If I happen to marry (or otherwise have significant resource sharing with) a woman who is poor at this kind of decision making I'll first make sure she is willing to let me have final say on critical financial decisions. (Irrational and stubborn or egotistic about it is what would black-ball her.)
Would it be useful to distinguish between rationalist subculture affiliation and habitually rational?
I think this is a useful distinction. I care much more about "habitually rational" than "subculture affiliation," when it comes to social interactions.
Probably. In this case it is the subculture affiliation that matters---given the context of considering what strategies to use in response to the gender imbalance therein.
I think a statement more likely than "once you go rational you can't go back" is "once you go luminous you can't go back". I think my OH has expressed something along the lines of it just being too much effort when he considers dating someone who can't just tell him if they are having system 1 issues.
I hate to No-True-Scotswoman you but I can't help but wonder exactly how rational she was - the cases I know have all been drawn from either East Coast or West Coast whole communities with corresponding personal transmission of skills.
Enough that by my best estimate based on what exposure to and information that I have about those communities she could easily soar to high levels of status within either (take that either way). Probably collecting an arbitrary sized harem in a matter of weeks.
Rationalist skills are impressive and sometimes convenient for lovers to have but again, I'd be just as impressed with and drawn to an interested prospective mate with Taekwondo or Jujutsu skills who was willing to spar with me. I'm reasonably aware of what I look for in a companion and a lover and that which is required to be respected as a rationalist just doesn't happen to be near the top of the list.
I actually suspect there is an element of in group bias at play here---the same bias I see in my Christian friends and relatives who tell each other how much superior other Christians are as friends and romantic interests.
I've noticed a pretty strong in-group bias in myself WRT Less Wrong.
You two are so cute when your argue!!!
Should rational men take into account when considering very long term relationships with women that the women are likely to remain physically and mentally healthy longer than the men are, with the effect being amplified if the woman is younger than the man? If that factor is considered, then independent good sense is very valuable.
To make it more specific, it's highly likely that in a very long term heterosexual relationship, the woman will be wrangling medical personnel for the man. Of course, it's also pretty likely that at some point, the man will wrangling medical personnel for the woman, just not as likely.
Numeracy level of both marriage partners has a large impact on lifetime savings
While I understand the sentiment, the physics department will not usually have a significantly higher volume of women than the local rationalist/etc. group.
As long as it's got at least one lady who hasn't already been recruited, what difference does that make?
On an individual level, this will work fine for a few people. It makes a difference, though, if everyone tries that specific strategy. The strategy will lose its effectiveness quickly, and the overall effect on the gender divide will not be very large.
Trying to bring more women into the relevant spheres is clearly a big part of the answer. However, simply moving women from one low-density area to another doesn't seem very productive to me.
It is true that you receive dimishing marginal returns whenever you try to import people. Even if we were to use the largest available population sink, eventually we'd run into limits. The larger the population sinks you use, the less it has been filtered, so while your returns diminish more slowly, the effort required at the outset is larger.
Given the small size of our group, physics departments are more than large enough population sinks for the forseeable future.
I actually dislike the focus on pulling in people from physics/computer programming/math. As Dreaded_Anomaly mentions, these are fields which have just as bad of a gender ratio as here. As long as we continue focusing on those fields, I don't think the gender ratio problem is going to get much better.
Also, I don't think there's anything inherent in rationality that means that it requires physics/programming/math types. But I think our current community is generally set up in a way to self-perpetuate that.
I can understand that STEMM types might more frequently lean towards rationality, which is why recruiting from there is often a suggestion. (If you have a .5 probability that a random intelligent STEMM person would be amenable to rationality, but only a .2 probability that a random intelligent person of another field would be, for example.)
A way to get around that: Personally, I've found that anyone I have a match of >94% on OKC has a high probability of being the aforementioned Rationalists Who Just Don't Know It Yet. I myself was "recruited" this way. Dated someone from OKC (We no longer date, but are still REALLY good friends) who I was a 99% match with, and they pointed me toward HPMoR, then LW, etc, all while modeling "proper rationalist behavior" in our discussions. I think that's all that it takes, often, to get someone interested in rationality (once you filter for interest, whether you use okc for this or not)
What is the extra M for? Googling yields a band.
Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Medicine
Agree that the OKCupid technique probably works too. But I wasn't suggesting that we put up broad recruiting posters in the math department to solve the gender ratio thingy; I was suggesting that rationalist men seeking convertible mates try to date mathematical women. As Lucas observes, our community is still small enough that this provides a relatively large pool.
Good point! I understand what you are getting at. So long as it is also understood that mathematical does not necessarily equate to rational, and that rational does not require a person to be mathematical, etc.
Really? Back when I first joined I wouldn't have been surprised by this, but they've fiddled around with the match algorithms since then, and 94% matches have gone from extremely rare compatibility to fairly trivial (and yes, I've checked against people whose match values I knew from before the algorithm changes to make sure it's not just a result of a larger userbase.) These days, I could browse through a considerable number of people with that match rating before finding anyone I would expect to relate to.
A useful corollary of the last point is that anyone with the HPMOR tag on their profile is likely to be a very high match :)
This.
True for both genders.
Yep, though it's weaker evidence to observe that (straight) female rationalists don't go back when they can have their pick of mates and/or an entire harem by staying.
Actually, I have seen a couple of cases of women using their newly acquired Sanity Attractiveness Points(*) to pull in hot guys they want from outside the community, though in both such cases they still had rationalist mates on the side.
(*) = According to the one woman whose case I know in detail, this is apparently a pretty strong effect - a female from within rationalist culture, dealing with a guy from outside rationalist culture who has an unmet need for sanity, may appear unto him as a Goddess. Sort of the dating equivalent of what happens when people with unmet needs discover LW or read HPMOR.
I wonder what effect rationalist culture has on the attractiveness of guys who date outside the community. Are they more or less appealing than non-rationalist guys?
Now that is a strategy I can endorse.
I could believe that.
Ah, yes. I completely agree, and should clarify what I personally mean by "rationalist". I care less whether they are (already) a part of the community, especially considering that the community in this city consists solely of people that were brought into it either by Jesse or myself.
Those "guy(s) from outside rationalist culture who has an unmet need for sanity, [she] may appear unto him as a Goddess."--Yeah, that's true, and I just consider them to be "Rationalists Who Don't Know It Yet."
If you really need the $500, why throw that away for a one-off, low odds chance for more? The first $500 almost certainly has greater marginal utility than the second, and possibly more than the next 1,999 put together. And that's assuming the offer is totally legit, which is not very rational.
Sure, if they're to starve (or freeze to death) within the month if not for this money, then certainly: accepting the bet would then become a 85% chance of death vs a 15% chance at a million. And rejecting a 85% chance of death is reasonable, even in the face of a 15% chance at a million.
But relatively very few of the people offered the choice would really be so much in need. There's no point in finding ways to excuse simple irrationality by bringing in extreme scenarios that would justify it in some implausible cases....
Simple irrationality would be taking the implausible scenario both seriously and at face value. A priori, the likelihood of someone honestly offering you money for nothing is extremely low, as is the likelihood that they even have a million dollars to give away. If you don't take the scenario seriously, it's just a case of guessing the teacher's password. If you do take it seriously, it would not be rational in most contexts take the offer at face value, in which case "$500 now" has about as a good an expected pay-off as any, and at least provides guaranteed evidence of the offer's legitimacy.
At this point you're just using pedantry to dismiss the very concept of hypothetical questions. The question is simple: What option you would take with the mentioned choices at hand as a given situation: Whether you'd prefer the certainty of 500 dollars or a 15% chance at 1 million.
As simple as that. You really don't have to estimate how unlikely you're to be given this option in reality. That's why it's called a "hypothetical" question.
And the question is likewise not about what you would do if you were in danger of starving to death. Just what you would do. You're free to offer a conditional response (e.g. "I'd choose the 15% chance at a million, except if I was dead broke and in danger of immediate starvation), but just claiming that all possible responses are equally valid, regardless of conditions, just won't fly.
I'm tapping out.
I am a girl and I approve of this suggestion. I'll also note that LW has been very good about this in all of my experiences here (discussion forum, IRC, and meetups IRL).
But I like dating subculture boys. Also, the bisexual one I see sometimes would not be deterred by considering me male for all social purposes.
And yet for all your interest and your polyhacking I suspect that you and those like you just don't have sufficient time or sexual and romantic interest to satisfy the demand. (My apologies if I have underestimated your enthusiasm and endurance!) This inflates your value and means at a grossly simplified level that for a given level of attractiveness a male that doesn't qualify to date you within this culture may attract women outside the subculture as attractive to you. Those that do qualify to date you could expect general population dating opportunities with women who are even sexier than you, or better at sport or who perhaps have neck-down alopecia.
I'm sure you'll not be lacking for available, interested males. Unless all the males started looking elsewhere and didn't notice that the incentives at the margin had changed. They'd also have to resist any overt advances you should happen to make!
Of course bisexual males also have more potential romantic interests, not being limited to the scarce female population. Perhaps that means this 'avoid scarcity' principle doesn't even need special case treatment for bisexual males. Homosexual males on the other hand may get all confused if they try to implement it!