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Eugine_Nier comments on LW Women: LW Online - Less Wrong Discussion

29 [deleted] 15 February 2013 01:43AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 18 February 2013 06:31:43AM 3 points [-]

I dunno if we're doing women a service or disservice by accepting this viewpoint... is it an interpretation that many feminists would approve?

How is this relevant? The important question is whether this interpretation is true.

So one might naively expect that even women are more emotional than men, this difference will mostly have vanished when we shift to the groups "Men Who Like LW Stuff" and "Women Who Like LW Stuff". But apparently this isn't the case, since OP finds (and some commenters agree) that women who are on LW still tend to be more put off by the hostility. So I suppose we should conclude that the correlation between analytical-ness and empathic-shortcoming is bunk.

Why? All you've shown is that this correlation doesn't fully screen off gender.

Comment author: Spurlock 18 February 2013 05:22:57PM *  1 point [-]

The important question is whether this interpretation is true.

Fair point. I think I was using this as a proxy for truth, the same way you might ask "do economists believe X?" instead of "is X true about the economy?". But also I was up late.

Why? All you've shown is that this correlation doesn't fully screen off gender.

True. It is possible that empathic ability is affected by both gender and analytical disposition directly, rather than gender by-way-of analytical disposition. Or more realistically, that empathic ability is affected by analytical-ness as well as other, orthogonal personality traits, and that these might be gender-correlated as well. This interpretation seems messy from a complexity standpoint, but such is the subject matter.

I wonder what other personality traits we'd have to account for before we could explain the gender difference. Also, there's the question of just how much of the difference is left over once we've screened off however much analytical disposition screens off. Again, I'm just hashing out confusion here, not claiming to have solutions.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 19 February 2013 01:39:20AM -1 points [-]

Fair point. I think I was using this as a proxy for truth, the same way you might ask "do economists believe X?" instead of "is X true about the economy?".

You really need to get better proxies for truth.

Comment author: Spurlock 19 February 2013 04:57:51AM 2 points [-]

Well, if nothing else comes out of this exchange, at least I can now relate to the OP that much better.

Comment author: bogdanb 09 March 2013 04:38:56PM 0 points [-]

Weird. I read Eugine's "better proxies" comment as an obvious joke, and had to think for at least five seconds to realize what your reply meant. I can't tell for sure if I would have taken it as criticism if it were directed at me, but I can see how it could be unpleasant if I had.

Priors to update: I can't tell if a comment is unpleasantly critical as well as I thought I did.

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