RobbBB comments on 2013 Survey Results - Less Wrong

74 Post author: Yvain 19 January 2014 02:51AM

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Comment author: RobbBB 24 January 2014 03:15:24AM * 5 points [-]

Thanks for clarifying. Using Scott's analogy, I'd respond by pointing to

In this case a yoga class might still benefit by making it super-clear that men are welcome and removing a couple of things that might make men uncomfortable

At present, going by the survey results, 9.8% of LessWrongers identify as female. (And 9.9% as women.) Quoting Wikipedia:

Women’s representation in the computing and information technology workforce has been falling from a peak of 38% in the mid-1980s. From 1993 through 1999, NSF’s SESTAT reported that the percentage of women working as computer/information scientists (including those who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher in an S&E field or have a bachelor’s degree or higher and are working in an S&E field) declined slightly from 33.1% to 29.6% percent while the absolute numbers increased from 170,500 to 185,000. Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Catalyst in 2006 indicated that women comprise 27-29% of the computing workforce. A National Public Radio report in 2013 stated that about 20% of all US computer programmers are female.

I don't think either hypothesis ('women are socialized to be less interested in computer science' and 'women interested in computers get driven out by differential treatment by computer science authorities and communities') predicts that we'd be doing worse at gender representativeness over time. We'd expect both causes for inequality to be lessening over time, as society becomes more progressive / feminist / egalitarian. It is clear, however, that something we're doing is responsible for the rarity of women in such communities, and that this something can shift fairly rapidly from decade to decade. So, whatever the mechanism is, it looks plausibly susceptible to interventions.

If we grant that LessWrong has the power to improve its gender ratio without degrading the quality of discussion, then the only question is whether we prefer to retain a less diverse community. And it would be surprising to me if we have no power to move things in that direction. If we became merely as welcoming as computer science in general is today, we'd double the proportion of women at LessWrong. from 10% to 20%; if we became as attractive as computing and IT were in the '80s, or as economics is today, we'd rise to 30% or 40%; and if we had proportionally as many women as there are in psychology today, we'd be up to 70% women and have the opposite problem!

When we're doing worse than the worst of the large fields that can be claimed to have seeded LW, it's probably time to think seriously about solutions. (And, no, 'hey what if MIRI started a Pinterest account' does not qualify as 'thinking seriously about gender inclusivity'.)

Overall, I agree with Ben Kuhn's points on this issue.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 January 2014 08:41:38PM * 2 points [-]

Looks like this kind of stuff also varies geographically: physics is not 89% male where I am, more like 65% I'd guess (and yoga more like 25% than 3%).

Comment author: [deleted] 24 January 2014 06:14:12PM * 2 points [-]

If we grant that LessWrong has the power to improve its gender ratio without degrading the quality of discussion

I don't think it has a lot of power, because (1) males have higher IQ variability (so, apparently, males are two times more likely to have an IQ of 130, and average IQ on LW is 138, which should create even bigger gender imbalance), and (2.1) according to 2012 survey, LW is ~80% Myers-Briggs NT, (2.2) NT is much more prevalent in males (somewhere around 2:1), (2.3) apparently, NT's have very high average intelligence.

My guess is that we can move it a little without lowering content quality, but I doubt if anything significant is possible.

Basically, we just need to find out gender ratio of individuals with average IQ of 135-140 who are also NT's.

Btw, Yvain posted a huge comment to Ben Kuhn's post.

Comment author: V_V 24 January 2014 07:32:52PM 1 point [-]

I can't see why gender imbalance is supposed to be a problem.

Comment author: CCC comment score below threshold [+] (6 children)

Comment author: V_V 24 January 2014 08:16:41PM * 2 points [-]

(It may be beneficial to some people but detrimental to others; let as assume for the moment that the amount of benefit recieved, as with most activities, is not directly tied to gender).

How do you support that assumption?

If activity A is beneficial to x% of people and detrimental to (100-x)% of people, then we should expect, in a perfect world, to see x% of males and x% of females attempting activity A. In all cases, this is a 50/50 male:female ratio.

Again, assuming that whatever makes activity A beneficial to some people and not other people isn't correlated with gender. But lots of psychological traits are correlated with gender, hence this seems a highly questionable assumption.

Moreover, even if the particular activity A gives equal benefits to both genders, comparative advantage may make one of them more interested in performing A than the other is.

Comment author: CCC 26 January 2014 04:07:47AM -1 points [-]

(It may be beneficial to some people but detrimental to others; let as assume for the moment that the amount of benefit recieved, as with most activities, is not directly tied to gender).

How do you support that assumption?

That depends on the nature of activity A.

If, for example, activity A consists of posting on (and reading posts and sequences on) LessWrong, then I would support it on the basis that I cannot see any evidence that the benefits of rationality are at all correlated to gender. If activity A consists of posting on, and reading posts on, a website dedicated to (say) breastfeeding, then there is clearly a greater benefit for female readers and my assumption becomes invalid.

For most activities, however, I tend to default to this assumption unless there is a clear causal chain showing how a difference in gender changes the benefit received.

Again, assuming that whatever makes activity A beneficial to some people and not other people isn't correlated with gender. But lots of psychological traits are correlated with gender, hence this seems a highly questionable assumption.

My immediate question is how many of those psychological traits correlated with gender are due, not to gender, but to the cultural perception of gender?

Comment author: V_V 26 January 2014 02:55:04PM 2 points [-]

If, for example, activity A consists of posting on (and reading posts and sequences on) LessWrong, then I would support it on the basis that I cannot see any evidence that the benefits of rationality are at all correlated to gender.

And health benefits of yoga are probably not strongly correlated to gender.

Yet people engage in leisure activities generally not because of possible long-term benefits, but because they find these activivities intrinsicaly rewarding. And since different people have different preferences, the activities they find rewarding differ.
Add the fact that leisure time is a limited resource, hence a tradeoff between available activities must be done, and these competing activities, and their enjoyablility differs from one person to the other.

Personal preferences correlate with gender.

My immediate question is how many of those psychological traits correlated with gender are due, not to gender, but to the cultural perception of gender?

Gender correlates to many, if not most, objectively measurable physiological traits.
As for psychological traits, we know for sure that sexual hormones affect brain development during fetal stage, and brain activity during adult life.
Whether each particular psychological trait correlates to gender due to a biological cause, or a cultural one, or a combination of both, is a matter of research.

But I don't think the nature vs nurture question really matters here: different people have different preferences, whatever the cause, and I don't see why we should try to engineer them to achieve some arbitrary ideal.

Comment author: CCC 27 January 2014 09:53:23AM -1 points [-]

And health benefits of yoga are probably not strongly correlated to gender.

This is why it surprises me that there is a gender imbalance in people going to yoga classes.

Yet people engage in leisure activities generally not because of possible long-term benefits, but because they find these activivities intrinsicaly rewarding. And since different people have different preferences, the activities they find rewarding differ. Add the fact that leisure time is a limited resource, hence a tradeoff between available activities must be done, and these competing activities, and their enjoyablility differs from one person to the other.

Personal preferences correlate with gender.

Here, again, I think that a large part of the difference between personal preferences with gender is more cultural than biological. Consider, for example; culturally, over a large part of the world, it is considered acceptable for a woman to wear a skirt, but frowned on for a man. As a result, few men wear skirts; if you were to pick a random man and ask for his opinion on wearing a skirt, it is likely that he would not wish to do so. However, if one considers a slightly different culture for a little (for example, the Scottish kilt), one finds a similar garment being worn by many men. So a person's preferences are affected by culture.

But I don't think the nature vs nurture question really matters here: different people have different preferences, whatever the cause, and I don't see why we should try to engineer them to achieve some arbitrary ideal.

I don't see it so much as reaching an arbitrary ideal; I see it more as avoiding a known failure mode.

I have noticed that, throughout history, there have been cases where people were divided into separate groups; whether by race, gender, religion, or other means. In most of those cases, one group managed to achieve some measure of power over all the other groups; and then used that measure of power to oppress all the other groups, whether overtly or not.

This leads to all sorts of problems.

One means of maintaining such a division, is by creating a further, artificial divide, and using that to widen the gap between the groups. For example, if significantly more men than women own land in a given society, then restricting the ability to vote to landowners will tend to exacerbate any official pro-male bias. (This works the other way around, as well).

Therefore, when I see a major statistical imbalance for no adequately explained reason (such as the noted gender bias on LessWrong, or the imbalance in yoga classes) I find it a cause for slight concern; enough to at least justify trying to find and explain the reason for the imbalance.

Comment author: V_V 27 January 2014 01:25:50PM * 2 points [-]

Consider, for example; culturally, over a large part of the world, it is considered acceptable for a woman to wear a skirt, but frowned on for a man. As a result, few men wear skirts; if you were to pick a random man and ask for his opinion on wearing a skirt, it is likely that he would not wish to do so. However, if one considers a slightly different culture for a little (for example, the Scottish kilt), one finds a similar garment being worn by many men. So a person's preferences are affected by culture.

So, should we campaign to increase the number of men who wear skirts and the number of women who wear traditional Scottish kilts? Or the number of non-Scottish people who wear kilts? Or the number of Scottish people who wear pants? I don't know, what is the proper PC ideal here?

One means of maintaining such a division, is by creating a further, artificial divide, and using that to widen the gap between the groups. For example, if significantly more men than women own land in a given society, then restricting the ability to vote to landowners will tend to exacerbate any official pro-male bias. (This works the other way around, as well).

I don't think anybody proposed a restriction of voting rights based on the partecipation to LessWrong or yoga classes, thus this seems to be a slippery slope argument.

Please don't take this personally, but trying to "re-educate" people to change their preferences in order to socially engineer an utopian society, is the hallmark of totalitarianism.
I think that, as long as people get along peacefully, it's better to recognize, acknowledge and respect diversity.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 January 2014 05:36:24PM -1 points [-]

Note to anyone reading this who was disturbed by that comment: V_V is a known troll on LW.

RobbBB, please take that into account when deciding whether LW needs an explicit post on whether it's good qua good to improve gender ratio if it's otherwise cost-free to do so.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 25 January 2014 08:27:30PM 1 point [-]

You know, it's starting to seem that your definition of "troll" is "someone who dares disagree with Eliezer's firmly held beliefs".

Comment author: V_V 26 January 2014 02:07:07PM 5 points [-]

Don't feed the troll. :D

Comment author: ArisKatsaris comment score below threshold [+] (0 children)

RobbBB comments on 2013 Survey Results - Less Wrong

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