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Konkvistador comments on [Poll] Method of Recruitment - Less Wrong Discussion
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Why does group X being under-represented somewhere automatically warrant efforts to increase their representation?
I don't think a group being underrepresented automatically warrants effort. It's trivial that there are cases where that might result in a worse outcome. However, like I implied in a previous comment in this thread, it's more to do with wanting more women in this community. Why? This community predominantly white, male, and nerd-like, and that makes it easily ignored by outsiders. I think if one of goals of LessWrong is to spread rationality, it's in its interest to diversify its culture and population.
This thread's tl;dr:
You are proposing we expend effort in order to provide gain. Have you asked yourself the following questions:
If not, is there any evidence this is a cost effective strategy for "not being ignored"?
Yes, for example, if we find that many female LW converts come from a My Little Pony forum, then I wouldn't mind some spending time talking about rationality and how perhaps the characters in the show relate to it (that's what I've heard anyway). I might spend time doing that, instead of reading articles from google reader.
Or, if we find that many of the converts come from HPMoR, I might try recommending it to fans of Harry Potter that I know. And so on.
The costs seem trivial.
We are typing words on the internet. All costs are trivial. Except the most important one, how smart people spend their time matters a lot.
We all spend time on stupid or meaningless things. I haven't seen many people that can spend 8-12 hours of their day working on a difficult problem without needing a cognitive break. Some people watch anime, others read interesting but irrelevant articles, and so on. I don't see a problem with do something trivial (with the potential for being meaningful) in one of those cognitive breaks. Actually, it would seem to be a better use of time.
So we are seeking for ways to spend our down time, that happen to produce some externalities that we like? Considering there is a wide variety of ways to spend one's down time, the same logic applies, only that now we need to optimize for restfulness, entertainment and other functions that down time serves as well.
Also remember that for most people nearly everything we do on this site is leisure time. That happens to have positive externalities (or so we like to think).
In any case isn't this shifting the goalpost slightly from where we where a bit back?
I understood our conversation as being about how wanting more women is an intuition we should act upon, perhaps changing norms and expending effort in planned way, because of the pay-offs of better signalling.
Yes, if you want more women in the community, or if you just want to diversify the culture, or if you want to contribute to better signaling for your community.
Have you found a way to optimize for any of those? And is it more useful to spend time optimizing for those factors than just going with your immediate desires?
No, I don't it's shifting the goalpost. Wanting more women is not intuitional, it's a desire. A desire that should be ignored if it's dangerous, but I don't see that it is. Otherwise, I say satisfy those desires in your cognitive breaks (e.g., watching anime). Also, I think, however, that that kind of desire leads to satisfying the goal of spreading rationality.
So, we all have desires. We all have spare time that spend satisfying more trivial desires. I believe one of the goals in this community is to spread rationality. Some people have taken up that goal. If you desire more woman in this community, it's not unreasonable (maybe not optimal, but I doubt any of us spend our leisure time optimally, so that's a bit of a red herring) ask the existing women how they got here, so that you may try to persuade more women to join this community through similar channels. This satisfied the spreading rationality goal and desire, or it may just satisfy the goal of spreading rationality in that strengthens the community and its appearance. I'm arguing for the weaker justification because I don't have sufficient evidence for the latter case.
I think I agree with the weaker justification.
So white nerd-like males tend to generally get ignored in Western society? I haven't seen much difference in the amount of attention female nerds tend to get (except among male nerds). Mostly female groups of nerds or subcultures don't seem to attract even male nerd attention. Groups of non-white nerds also don't seem to do better attention wise. Otakus aren't taken seriously in Japan. Weaboos even less.
Mayybe, just maybe, could it perhaps be the nerd-like thing? Might we be better off working on that?
I see your point now, and I think might agree. Although, there are different more widely accepted versions of nerd culture (I think someone like Jonah Lehrer exemplifies that more acceptable culture), while the other versions are seen as populated by hopeless losers (e.g., the typical trekkie that's laughed at in sitcoms). So, if you were to fight against LW nerd culture, I think you could keep a lot of it out in the open. You'd have to treat your love of Star Trek, for example, as sort of a guilty pleasure and laugh it off. And you could never mention that you like anime unless it's by Miyazaki. But you could profess your love of books, science, and philosophy while gaining status for doing so.
Actually now that I think of it combating nerd-like behaviour is probably one of the easier ways to make LessWrong less white and less male (if for some reason you want to do that - since some white people are perfectly ok human beings, some of my best friends are white males). For example it can be coherently argued that in the US at least nerd culture is basically hyperwhite culture.
I don't have anything against nerd culture or white males; I'm all of the above. I'm also not arguing that we should dissuade or combat whiteness, maleness, or nerdliness.
I'll happily answer your question if you engage in some basic reciprocity by answering my question to you.
Ah, sorry I see which post you mean. I missed that one.