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Coscott comments on Polling Thread - Less Wrong
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Comments (118)
I answered "other" because I haven't studied the matter enough to have a strong opinion.
Same - I've heard of it before and it seems plausible to me, but I don't know enough to confidently say I "believe" in it.
I answered "other" because I don't know about variance, but I'm reasonably confident that even if there is a biological variance, it's not the primary reason that there's a gender imbalance in the sciences.
Coscott's question does say “in part”. (That's why I answered ‘yes’.)
Me too: "other" meaning "I don't know enough", in contrast to the other options that are variations on "No one knows enough".
Other: it's a huge mish-mash of interactions between different things in biology (hard-wired impulses that are different between sexes, AND the fact that male have only one X chromosome leaving to more recessive stuff), cultural stereotypes, game theory, patterns of social interaction - even if I had a clear model of the network of the causal relationships between all those factors, I still would find it hard to say whether under that model "variance in intelligence is caused by biology" would count as true or not.
This post has gotten 4 down votes. I am not sure if those are signalling: "You should have organized the question better." or "You should not ask questions which provide evidence of the fact that lesswrong is sexist." or "You should not ask polling questions about beliefs on something like this, because it doesn't given any good evidence about the truth of the claim." or something else
I assume it is the first one, but I am not sure.
There are three parts to this question, and I recommend asking them separately.
Also, Coscott can put multiple polls in the same comment, saving on space.
I would do this myself, rather than hinting that Coscott should do it themselves, but I don't know whether Coscott really means "biological" when they write "biological", as opposed to meaning e.g. "genetic" or "innate".
I don't see how replacing biological with inate or genetic changes the question. Describe a position for which the word choice matters. Also, you can rewrite it if you like, and I will retract my version. I assume any way you phrase it will get me the data I want.
Someone might believe in the causal graph (male students implicitly expected by their peers, teachers and family to study sciences, while female students aren't) → (female students having lower science knowledge) → (fewer women in the sciences).
If one thinks about it, this causal chain implies a biological difference between male students & female students. Knowledge is stored in brains, so a difference in knowledge implies a difference in brains, which would be a biological difference. But this biological difference wouldn't necessarily be an innate or genetic difference. Were the causal graph correct and sufficiently complete, the male-female knowledge difference would be a biological but non-innate difference generated non-genetically. So someone believing in that causal graph would say "yes" if asked whether the difference were "biological", but "no" if asked whether it were "genetic" or "innate".
Although I question if that is worth it since several people already answered.
You haven't learnt Yvain's lesson!
You need to be super clear and explicit about whether you want answers as percentages, or as values between 0 and 1! Otherwise you get an unexploitable mish-mash.
If I am reading the less wrong comment formatting page correctly, using poll:probability (with brackets) will force responses to be between 0 and 1, to avoid this. (And Upvotes to whoever put strict input limits on a free text field! As a person who handles raw data, I often don't see this, and it should be encouraged when performed.)
It doesn't avoid the problem if people want to vote with a percentage < 1%, and try to do so with a 0-100 value (e.g., .5 meaning .5% rather than 50%).
Very good point. I had not thought of this earlier, but it is entirely correct.
This has taught me that I find it more intuitive to think in terms of conditional probabilities than marginal probabilities.
"Too much Patriarchy bullshit in the data to tell".
There are very strong indicators that discrimination is going to hurt your career prospects in the sciences quite badly if you happen to be in possession of two X chromosomes. Number of widely cited papers needed in order to be awarded tenure, pay at a given level of qualifications, ect.. And even if you have not read those studies, the fact that this happens is blatantly obvious to anyone that is not both male and fairly oblivious.
This is quite sufficient to explain the disparity all on its own. Any underlying "biology" is utterly swamped in significance by this.
Also, the balance of probability is that any given woman you encounter in the sciences is at least one out of smarter, more stubborn or just flat out much harder working than her stature in the field would indicate. Often all 3. Getting anywhere against the weight of discrimination and discouragement requires you to be an outlier to start with.
Does Patriarchy explain the left tail too?
You mean the bit where boys are more likely to get into academic trouble ect? Heck yes. dont mistake patriarchy for a system that actually helps men - it is a social pathology and not kind to either gender. At all. It contains ideas about identity and status that can and will fuck you. The bad boy trying to be cool by blowing of class and acting out against authority didn't come up with that set of behaviors de novo.
Seems that we have learned that P(A&B)<=P(A).
But I wonder whether we have an anchoring problem here. I myself used round numbers and notice that the median is a round number and that the probabilities go down in steps of 0.05 (and the mean follows suit almost linearly).
If anything the compound probabilities should show more or less geometric progression.
Anchoring to one of the values and then just roughly correcting for the difference in phrasing will not work (i.e. don't add any precision).
Do I notice this correctly? Can this be fixed? How?
I rated the second question as more likely than the first because I think "most traits" means something different in the two questions.
OK, I guess I'll keep mine up too to since anyone reading this far might as well just vote on both
"I believe that there is a biological variance in intelligence and insufficient information to allow for accurate qualitative analysis."
Your null hypothesis of each question assumes the difference, if present, will favour males; regardless of the theory's specifics, if you wish to gather fully rounded data on the opinions of your population, you must needs allow for that in the questions. If there's a theory that blue is finest on a Winter's day, and you wish to find out what people think of it, you must counter the inherent priming of the theory by including such options as, "Blue is finest on a Summer's day," and, "Blue is never the finest during day"; think of what the theory tries to answer. In these cases: the intersection of biology and intellectual variance between the sexes, and at what time is blue finest on Earth (you also may include, "Blue is finest on a Winter's day in Greenland, but in Madagascar finest on a Fall's day.")