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Cyan comments on Don't Get Offended - LessWrong
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Citation needed. A more typical claim might be "socialization is the cause of the vast majority (but not the entirety) of the observed difference between boys' and girls' behaviors and skills," and this easily falsifiable claim is borne out by the available data, never mind evo psych just-so stories about what worked in the EEA.
A lot of nitpicky LW discussion could be avoided if we implicitly qualified absolute-sounding claims about relations in real life with "in most cases". It would be rare that someone would object to e.g. a claim such as "differences between the behavior of boys and girls are due to socialization" being amended by "in the vast majority of case", or by "... but there are exceptions."
We can default to claims as absolute when they refer to theoretical frameworks, for which absolute claims typically work out more, and are intended more often.
I've danced this dance before, with Robin Hanson no less.
Let me side with your youthful incarnation from five years ago:
Beyond just clarifying, you did seem to have taken the initial comment at face value, even though you probably suspected the intended meaning.
I agree with you regarding making the intended meaning as plain as possible as best practice; however, sidetracking the discussion in such a way often leads to "gotcha" continuations of minor details (minor because most people will side with you interpreting claims about human behavior as non-absolute by default, and follow the discussion correctly without such clarifications/rebuttals), which tend to replace other, more substantive discussions.
Sure. But it gets a little more sticky when one is attributing a false absolute claim to some other party, as Eugine did.
Or, you know, a google search. From memory even a google site search would be adequate.
(Which is not to say that such claim is inherent to feminism itself. Merely that the specific observation by Eugine that it is often made by feminists is not worthy of 'citation needed' stigma.)
Since the claim that is actually often made by feminists is both weaker and, according to current research, true, Eugine's "observation" is a strawman. And I snort at the notion that my reply imparts a "stigma".