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Kawoomba comments on LW Women Entries- Creepiness - Less Wrong
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Consider, for example, that you were a male and your interests (hypothetically) were limited to computer games, programming and rationality forums. Mind you, not that there are any such persons out there... But just for a hypothetical:
Given these interests, would you not agree that a random 20 something male you encounter has a larger chance of having at least some of those in common with you, compared to a random 20 something female?
The statement you find so mindkilling would follow.
Not really. It is true, I think, that more men than women share my interests, but it doesn't follow that more men are interesting (to me). I've met women (and men) who I have very little in common with interests-wise, but who I still consider extremely interesting people. An example: I'm not all that interested in surfing but I have a number of friends who are really into it and I've had fascinating conversations with them about surfing.
Being able to take a certain amount of vicarious pleasure in another person's enthusiasms, even if you do not share those enthusiasms, seems like a useful social skill to develop (and I do think it's trainable).
I would characterize the condition you describe as being interested in people. (It applies to me as well.)
Kawoomba's hypothetical posits that "you" aren't interested in people, merely in computer games, programming and rationality forums.
Fair enough, but if this hypothetical character is not interested in people at all, I don't see why he cares about the gender distribution of people who share his interests. The implication seems to be that this person is interested in social contact, and uses his other interests as a filter to decide who he spends time with. My suggestion was that the desire for social contact might be more effectively satisfied if the person trained himself to be able to talk about (and at least temporarily be interested in learning about) things that he isn't immediately interested in.
I wouldn't characterize myself as merely being interested in people, incidentally, because my desire to converse with other people about their interests isn't indiscriminate. I doubt I could sustain an interesting conversation with someone who is really into the life and work of Kim Kardashian, for instance.
I was hoping your reply was the 'more pointed summary' I intended to post, but since it's not:
.. Being interested in how people work and universal human experiences.
I don't follow what you meant to express here.
You wrote
I originally intended to post something similar but more pointed. Since your post didn't quite attain the suitable level of pointedness, I replied to your post instead of the original.
That is, I originally intended to post something like (combining the wording of your and my posts):
Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.
Yes, if my interests are limited to activity-set X, and interest in X is strongly gender-linked, then I should not be surprised if my chances of a random person sharing an interest with me correlate strongly with that person's gender. And if I have a choice between picking humans at random from either a mixed-gender or a single-gender jar of humans, picking the proper single-gender jar maximizes my chances of finding an interesting human.
But in real life, that's not the only choice I have. If I'm only interested in X, I can choose social activities that are highly structured around X. Having done so, I'm effectively picking humans at random from an X jar. And, yes, I should expect the gender ratio in the X jar to not be evenly distributed. But also, at that point I should stop using gender as a proxy metric for X, because otherwise I'm in effect double-counting gender.
If instead I continue to select by gender, even on reflection, that seems to indicate that I'm not using gender as a proxy metric for X, but rather interested in gender for some other reason.
I understand. I would have found it less mindkilling if he'd said "women are less interesting to me" or "I find women less interesting than men." [Edit: re-read - he does actually sort of say this.]
I think sarcasm's unnecessary here!
"Interesting" isn't defined without a frame of reference, so the "to me" interpretation should be the default.
Perhaps it should be, normatively speaking, but I've interacted with enough people who behave as though "to normal/admirable people" was the interpretation they meant that my priors are pretty high for that interpretation.