I ascribe differences in those to cultural influences;I don't claim that aptitude isn't a factor, but I don't believe it has been or can easily be measured given the large cultural factors we have.

But if we can't measure the cultural factors and account for them why presume a blank slate approach? Especially since there is sexual dimorphism in the very nervous and endocrine system.

I think you got stuck on the aptitude, to elaborate, I'm pretty sure considering that humans aren't a very sexually dimorphous species (there are near relatives that are less however, example: Gibons), the mean g (if such a thing exists) of both men and women is probably about the same. There are however other aspects of succeeding at compsci or math than general intelligence.

Assuming that men and women carrying the exactly the same mems will respond on average identically to identical situations is a extraordinary claim. I'm struggling to come up with a evolutionary model that would square this with what is known (for example the greater historical reproductive success of the average woman vs. the average man that we can read from the distribution of genes). If I was presented with empirical evidence then this would be just too bad for the models, but in the absence of meaningful measurement (by your account), why not assign greater probability to the outcome proscribed by the same models that work so well when tested by other empirical claims?

I would venture to state that this case is especially strong for preferences.

And if you are trying to fine tune the situations and memes that both men and women for each gender so as to to balance this, where can one demonstrate that this isn't a step away rather than toward improving pareto efficiency? And if its not, why proceed with it?

Also to admit a personal bias I just aesthetically prefer equal treatment whenever pragmatic concerns don't trump it.

lmnop:

I think people generally dislike and avoid spending time in environments they perceive as anywhere on the scale from unwelcoming to hostile. That's not a trait that makes someone fearful, brittle, paranoid, or delicate, and I'm confused as to why you'd think I was implying any such thing-- quite the opposite.

The question is whether the usual standards of discourse practiced here are harsh and insensitive enough to qualify as "unwelcoming to hostile." It seems quite clear to me that only extraordinarily fearful, brittle, or paranoid personalities could honestly answer yes to this. (Here I mean "honestly" as opposed to the already mentioned discourse-destroying tactic where one actively seeks flimsy pretexts for sanctimonious indignation instead of engaging the substance of the argument.)

Again, this is not meant as an attack on everyone who has ever expressed indignation about some particular statement posted here, and in the present context, I don't want to express judgments about any such individual incident, whether in this thread or any other. Even among very smart and cultured people, occasional episodes of careless and stupid behavior are unavoidable, and in any discussion forum, people will sometimes be faced with valid reasons to feel angry and offended. However, the idea that the general standards of discussion here represent a threatening and hostile environment for women, which is supposedly the main reason why they're few in number, seems to me completely disconnected from reality.

IOW, men are saying that the women who meet their unreasonable expectations expect too much of them, and the women are saying that the men who meet their unreasonable expectations expect too much of them. In both cases, this is consistent with the notion that the average guy or gal is looking for an above-average gal or guy, respectively... and suggests that our evolved preference is to look for someone just out of our own (perceived) league.

Yes, but if women are more selective in general, then this situation is not symmetrical: women are more likely to try to date "out of their league." Or they perceive their "league" to be high than men at the same percentile of attractiveness think that their own league is.

My hypothesis is that the difference between minimum or maximum percentile attractiveness of the mates you are aiming for, and your own percentile attractiveness, is greater for women.

For instance, it could be the case that a man in the 50th percentile of male attractiveness views his "league" to be the 45th percentile to the 60th percentile of female attractiveness. Although he might sometimes make a pass at women of higher percentile attractiveness, most of his mating effort occurs in that window.

In contrast, a woman in the 50th percentile of female attractiveness may view her "league" to be the 55th to to 70th percentile of male attractiveness.

If it's the case that such dynamics are in play, they would predict certain problems in the dating world that match up well to my experience in real life. The result is that both sexes are often in a situation where "what you want, you can't get, and what you get, you don't want."

And note, I'm not saying that this broken system is women's fault for being prissy princesses, or something like that. The problem isn't women's preferences and selectivity in a vacuum, the problem is the gap between women's preferences and men's traits, and the gap between female and male selectivity. (PUAs try to solve this problem by changing men's traits to be more in line with female preferences, such that less women are forced to select them out.)

lmnop:

And yet the current norms of discussion are ones that leave a large proportion of the women here fighting through some measure of fear and discomfort to post-- but not the men.

That's not a realistic appraisal of the situation. Generally speaking, when it comes to sensitive topics that cannot be discussed openly and objectively without arousing ideological passions, appeasing the parties who claim to be shocked and offended can only lead to shutting down the discussion altogether, or reducing it to a pious recital of politically correct platitudes. It's a classic Schellingian conflict situation: by yielding to this strategy today instead of drawing a firm line, you only incentivize its further use the next time around.

That said, there are of course occasional situations here where people blurt out something stupid that their interlocutor might reasonably get angry at. But the idea that the general spirit of discussion of these topics here is somehow creating a hostile environment for women is just outlandish.

This discussion has also given me a lot of insight into why the proportion of women on this site is so atypically small even for computer programming crowds.

You write as if women were some unspeakably fearful, brittle, and paranoid creatures who undergo apoplectic shocks at the slightest whisper that interferes with their delicate sensibilities. Frankly, if I were a woman, I would take offense at that. You're basically proclaiming women congenitally incapable of rationally addressing claims they find unpleasant, instinctively reacting with a shock-and-offense emotional ploy instead.

In any case, if you believe that an online community has to bend over backwards to accommodate its womenfolk's sensitivities lest they run away in terror, how do you explain the fact that you'll find far more women at Roissy's blog, whose author goes out of his way to shock and offend in ways that nobody here would ever even think of putting in writing? Just a glance at his comment sections is enough to see that women actually aren't scared away that easily.

(ETA: fixed a typo.)

Hi Imnop, It seems from your karma that you must have been around for long enough that I missed the chance for a welcome. But welcome to lesswrong anyway. Did you find us via Harry Potter:MoR?

Note that the site implements markdown syntax for commenting. This allows for a convention of Using a ">" before any quoted paragraphs. This makes block quotes so much more readable!

And yet the current norms of discussion are ones that leave a large proportion of the women here fighting through some measure of fear and discomfort to post-- but not the men.

How do you know how the men feel in discussions like these? Have you asked them? It's not comfortable feeling that you're being made into the Bad Guy. Many men, including myself, base a lot of their self-image on what women think of them, and the kind of acceptance women show them. I doubt komponisto feels that great right now, and I don't think he deserves to continue to be villified after clarifying his original problematic comment.

Some that like lesswrong-type discussions may find dealing with the PUA-related talk here too mentally and emotionally draining for the site to be a net positive in experience.

PUA-related talk is a lesswrong-type discussion. It's the same people. We are just dealing with an amped-up level of inferential distance, biases, and disparity between priors due to different experiences.

There is a difference between strong emotion and typical biases and directly combating the discussion by taking things to the personal level. The historical record of LW posts tells me that this political intervention is at times escalated to the level of outright bullying. When expressing certain positions are associated with the threat of reputation sabotage we cannot expect the discussion to be especially well correlated with non-political reality.

And sex in particular requires deep understanding of both men's and women's psychology and socialization to make headway on, so there may be a limit to how much a discussion involving only one sex could accomplish.

Sex doesn't seem to be the distinguishing factor on whether a given participant is able to usefully engage on the subject, especially once the selection effect of 'people who like lesswrong type discussions' is applied. It is a political vs epistemic divide, not a male vs female one.

Does what the women are upset about make any sense to you?

Yes.

Reading your post gives me the impression that you think topics related to sex just blow up for no particular reason, but I may be wrong.

I know the reasons well enough to realise that the 'blowing up' will not go away without creating a separate place for discussing such topics in an objective, rational manner. I wouldn't dream of demanding that people refrain from taking the discussion personally on LW. When on a subsite dedicated to game theory as directly applied to humans then I would expect people to refrain from sabotaging objective discussions, when there is a very real opportunity to simply not to expose themselves to them.

Claiming offence is an extremely powerful political weapon. In a value neutral sense, ensuring that a topic blows up is an attempt to assert political influence on the outcome. And politics is the mind killer. I would like there to be a place to discuss topics related to sex in a purely objective manner. Because it just facts. Facts are just true of false. Not outrageous or unacceptable.

Some things I didn't get around to posting earlier-- Hanson is somewhat on my shit list because he's posted more than once about how the world would be a better place if women would have sex when they don't want to. He's a geek economist, so he gets to speculate about such things, but oddly enough, he doesn't consider the costs to women in such scenarios.

Consent and fear and all that: There was a previous discussion here about women giving out fake phone numbers, and there seemed to be no grasp of why a woman might do that instead of giving a straightforward refusal.

Imagine a world where all the socially acceptable partners for you are bigger, stronger, and probably more aggressive. You may prefer such yourself, but it's certainly the case that you'll take a status hit if you chose otherwise.

Furthermore, you've had niceness training-- it's hard work to directly contradict what someone else wants. Doing that amount of work is a gift which might not be bestowed on a spammer.

And you're not supposed to make the first move, for values of "not supposed to" which range from being blamed if you're raped to putting off potential partners if you do. I realize both of those vary according to who you happen to be around, and both may have faded somewhat in recent decades, but people do respond to potential risks.

None of this means that giving fake phone numbers is a wonderful thing, but there are actual human motivations for doing so which aren't just spite-- sometimes spite is involved, but the story isn't nearly that simple.

This is raw stuff, on all sides. I've been decently treated here, but some of the theorizing about women is enough to be a partial explanation for why this place is very high majority male.

If the Killing Curse can be blocked by inanimate objects, why is it that clothing doesn't block it?

Maybe it's like a liquid, and can get through cloth but not an entire sofa or wall.