All of Kendra's Comments + Replies

Once I was at a lecture about violence against women, where the lecturer told us that 20% of women are victims of domestic violence. I asked her if she knows in which country and approximately which decade was this research done; suggesting that the results for e.g. Sweden could be different than for e.g. Afghanistan, and also maybe the results now could be different from e.g. half century ago. She said that the research was replicated many times, and that no matter which country, or which year -- or even which definition of domestic violence was used! -- the results are always 20%. Somewhat ironically, after hearing about so much successful replication, my faith in the research actually decreased. Maybe "20%" is some psychological attractor, where all values smaller than half naturally converge. I also read somewhere an explanation (but haven't verified it) that the number of rapes at campus was achieved by surveying students in the first grade, adding together the results for "rape" and "attempted rape", and then multiplying the result by five (for five years of study). If that's true, even ignoring the "attempted" part, I think the linear approximation is wrong. First, it ignores the possibility that some factors could make being raped more likely in some parts of the population (such as binge drinking, or choosing violent boyfriends, or maybe just being in a really horrible campus), so being raped at grade X may overlap strongly with being raped at grade Y, and R(X ∪ Y) < R(X) + R(Y). Second, this approach multiplies the Lizardman’s Constant by five, which coincidentally already provides the result of 20%. I don't want to depreciate a serious issue, but I really wish that people doing research would start taking methodology more seriously.

Thanks for taking the time to comment. This is certainly true, so I would say by the common law definition or by the jurisdiction which the victim was in. Do you think that activists believe that 20% or more of women who attend college in the United States are raped while in college? If this is true, shouldn't activists support shutting down most colleges?

Hi Denise/Kendra, sich um ein kleines Kind alleine zu kümmern ist schon viel. Wenn Du dann auch noch studierst und EA und LW Meetups machst ist das schon ziemlich viel. Ich bewundere Deine Leistung. Ich habe einiges Material zu rationaler Erziehung auf meiner Homepage verlinkt, das Du Dir evtl. mal ansehen möchtest: http://lesswrong.com/user/Gunnar_Zarncke Ein Tipp (obwohl Du vermutlich weißt und nur nicht umsetzen konntest): Die Synergieeffekte bei der Kindererziehung sind beträchtlich. Es ist erheblich einfacher für zwei Eltern für zwei Kinder zu sorgen als 2x alleinerziehend mit Kind. Entsprechend in größeren Gruppen (das sieht man natürlich meist nur wenn sich mehrere Familien treffen). Hast Du keine Möglichkeit das zu nutzen? Du darfst mir gerne jederzeit Fragen stellen. Gruß aus Hamburg Gunnar

Welcome Denise! :)

It isn't customary that kind of quotation marks in English; “these ones” are usually used in typeset materials, but most people just use "the ones on the keyboard" on-line.

As another LW'er with kids in Germany, welcome!

Also der der das Meetup erstellt hat; der der die Doodle Umfrage geschlossen hat; dein Beitrag hier und dieser Beitrag sind höchstwahrscheinlich 4 unterschiedlichen Leuten vom letzten Meetup zuzuordnen, die demnach alle Bescheid wissen. Die fünfte Person ist wohl Sebastian. Von dem weiß ich aber nichts.

Boooooom.