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Alexei comments on [LINK] Why I'm not on the Rationalist Masterlist - Less Wrong Discussion

21 Post author: Apprentice 06 January 2014 12:16AM

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Comment author: Yvain 06 January 2014 11:53:53PM *  90 points [-]

Since it has suddenly become relevant, here are two results from this year's survey (data still being collected):

When asked to rate feminism on a scale of 1 (very unfavorable) to 5 (very favorable), the most common answer was 5 and the least common answer was 1. The mean answer was 3.82, and the median answer was 4.

When asked to rate the social justice movement on a scale of 1 (very unfavorable) to 5 (very favorable), the most common answer was 5 and the least common answer was 1. The mean answer was 3.61, and the median answer was 4.

In Crowder-Meyer (2007), women asked to rate their favorability of feminism on a 1 to 100 scale averaged 52.5, which on my 1 to 5 scale corresponds to a 3.1. So the average Less Wronger is about 33% more favorably disposed towards the feminist movement than the average woman (who herself is slightly more favorably disposed than the average man).

I can't find a similar comparison question for social justice favorability, but I expect such a comparison would turn out the same way.

If this surprises you, update your model.

Comment author: Alexei 08 January 2014 06:58:54PM 3 points [-]

Would love to see these numbers broken down by gender.

Comment author: Yvain 09 January 2014 12:12:09AM 8 points [-]

For the sake of simplicity, I used sex rather than gender and ignored nonbinaries. The average man on the site has a feminism approval score of 3.75; the average woman on the site has a score of 4.40. These are significantly different at p < .001.

The average man on the site has a social justice approval score of 3.55; the average woman on the site has a score of 4.21. These are, again, significantly different at p < .001.

Comment author: Alexei 09 January 2014 12:20:23AM 2 points [-]

Wow, this is exactly opposite of what I expected. Thank you!

Comment author: Yvain 09 January 2014 12:26:45AM 5 points [-]

You expected men to be more feminist than women? Why?

Comment author: [deleted] 10 January 2014 08:29:49PM *  2 points [-]

Because the Internet is weird? I've seen conversations in which the only feminists were men and the only MRAs were women.

(Myself, I expected the difference to have the same sign but be an order of magnitude smaller.)

BTW, FWIW in the survey on your blog men thought that being a woman is 3% worse than being a man and women thought that being a man is 3% better than being a woman, though the exact numbers varied noticeably depending on which question exactly they were answering.

Comment author: Vulture 11 January 2014 02:23:50AM 1 point [-]

Because the internet is weird? I've seen conversations in which the only feminists were men and the only MRAs were women.

Do you mean that this specific demographic difference is "weird" on the internet relative to real life?

Comment author: gjm 09 January 2014 12:38:21AM 2 points [-]

Perhaps what he expected was for men to call themselves more feminist than women, for some sort of signalling reasons (of course anon survey responses aren't much use for signalling, but maybe the idea is that people get into the habit of describing themselves in particular ways and then continue to do so for consistency even in contexts where there's no signalling benefit.

Comment author: hyporational 09 January 2014 04:57:13AM *  2 points [-]

anon survey responses aren't much use for signalling

They are if you signal for the group and expect other people do the same.