8 ms·

Ask YC: Are there any black or latino founded startups?

14 points by wumi 19y ago

Came across a great post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104728 Although I think the more we focus on race, the worst we are (i.e. instead of referring to Dungy as a coach who won the superbowl, he's the "first black head coach" to win a superbowl), I'm going to break my own rule for the purpose of discussion: How many founders in web/mobile/desktop applications have been Black or Latino in the last decade or so? (Or even Y C applicants for that matter)

bmaier 19y ago
You said it yourself... why does this even matter? Brains are all the same color (well for the most part anyway).
- curi 19y ago
  I think it matters because it's a sign of a problem in black and latino cultures, if they create startups at a much lower rate.
  - axod 19y ago
    Is that necessarily a problem? There are more black basketball players than white. Does that mean there is a problem in white cultures? People do what they want to do, and what they're good at.
    - curi 19y ago
      I think startups are a good thing, and cultures which highly value being productive are better. Also, what do you mean about people doing what they're good at? That seems to imply white people are genetically inferior at some sports, and black people genetically inferior at startups?
      - axod 19y ago
        You're saying white people can jump? ;) I was just saying I don't think it's a worthwhile idea to try and make everyone the same. We're not. Why aren't there as many women founders? Why should there necessarily be. Why aren't there as many male midwives as women... is that a problem? Sure if someone is actively preventing someone from doing something based on their race/gender/etc, then of course it should be solved if possible. I think the main thing is for people to grow up with self belief that they can do whatever they want to.
        curi 19y ago
        There are less woman founders because our culture treats men and women differently. And in particular, it is more repressive of females, and cripples their ability to think more, especially in business and technical areas. This is definitely a big problem, and the lack of woman founders is a good signal to get us to look at the area and wonder what is being done to women to prevent them from being founders.
        axod 19y ago
        That's terribly wrong IMHO. Very wrong. I used to think similar thoughts until I had kids. Girls and boys are just into different things. From a very early age. They have vastly different interests. Their brains work differently. They have different strengths. The key thing is that it's not just due to surroundings/culture. It's due to how they are wired. The fact is, the probability that a male will 'do a startup' is going to be greater than the probability that a female will. Why try to blame that on society? Why try and change that?
        curi 19y ago
        I'm not trying to blame anyone, but I believe the truth of the matter is that it is caused by culture. I believe the truth is that boys are girls are not wired differently, and their brains do not work differently. One reason to question the notion of specialized hardware (brains) for boys and girls is the concept of universality. The easiest, by far, way to be able to do many computations, is to create a computer that can do all computations. Similarly, the easiest way by far to create a system capable of creating a variety of kinds of knowledge, is to create one capable of creating any knowledge. One reason to believe culture would be behind these kinds of differences is we know that our culture transmits vast quantities of knowledge to children. Far more information than is in DNA, just in terms of bits. But also in terms of importance. We also know our culture believes boys and girls are different, and treats people different for many reasons.
        axod 19y ago
        "I believe the truth is that boys are girls are not wired differently, and their brains do not work differently." Do you have children? A girl and a boy? I do. I can tell you categorically that they most definitely without a doubt are 'wired' differently. Regardless of what you do. Treat them absolutely identically. Even before they have outside influences. Before they start nursery/school. Before society/friends influence them. They act very differently indeed. I didn't get that before I had kids. I thought girls liked dolls because people give girls dolls. They don't. It's a reflex. It's how they're built. Just like boys love cars and doing outside stuff. I seriously don't know what else to say here if you think men and womens brains are identical and work the same.
      - DanielBMarkham 19y ago
        To recap this entire thread: This just in: boys and girls are different. Also -- the human brain naturally forms generic pattern responses based on little information. Almost every time these prejudices are counterproductive in modern social context, but evolution has wired humans this way. Later, we'll have breaking news that people actually have different abilities in different areas, and those abilities can be statistically related to random factors such as toenail size, skin color, or number of nose hairs. Expect massive protests to follow.
    - wumi 19y ago
      It is statements like this that validate my post. People do NOT always do what they want to do, and not necessarily what they're good at -- often times there are limitations and a lack of opportunity for innovation/ entrepreneurship. I've always believed entrepreneurship is possible -- but then again I've been raised in a University town, so a startup would not be extraordinary. But Camden, the poorest city in the US, (which also has the highest Puerto Rican concentration, at 37% of the population) and do you think a minority has the same chance of a startup? I'm not looking for controversy though, just continued (including your comment) intelligent discussion and maybe even potential solutions. YC News seems like a pretty smart crowd -- why not leverage that for thoughts, comments, suggestions and even complaints?
    - Tichy 19y ago
      It seems to indicate at least that something is odd, doesn't it? You would expect statistically the same percentages in sports as in the whole of society. I am just an outsider to this whole problem, not coming from the US. But some things I heard - like maybe for blacks the best shot at being admitted to college is the sports stipend? Just guessing... I seem to remember that there were so many black jazz and blues musicians because it was one of the few professions that was open to blacks (a bit similar to the jews all becoming money lenders, perhaps). So I don't know the actual causes, but if I was an outsider seeing this anomaly, I would at least investigate.
  - Kaizyn 19y ago
    Blacks and Latinos percentage wise make up a smaller portion of the US population. What you need to find out is if blacks and latinos who each make up about 13% of the US population are starting up significantly fewer than 13% of the web startups.
- mnemonicsloth 19y ago
  You've got to be kidding me. It matters because there's more to living a life free of prejudice than just thinking you're too smart to be susceptible to it.
  - bmaier 19y ago
    Thanks for the down mod... I wasn't saying I thought I and other entrepreneurs are too smart to be susceptible to it. I was getting at the idea that it shouldn't be used as a crutch.
merrick33 19y ago
It's interesting that there are 7 points here, yet only one comment so far. I am Mexican, I run my own startup without any outside funding and my ethnicity has not been an issue, the value our startup adds is all that matters in our success or failure.
daniel-cussen 19y ago
The guys who did Mercado Libre (like eBay, but for Latin America) were Hispanic. They did very well, to my knowledge.
- hhm 19y ago
  Yes. The people who started Mercado Libre are from Argentina, and ML is in Nasdaq ("MELI"), so sure it's successful.
wumi 19y ago
the reason I started this thread was after reading the article about NASCAR and the lack of minorities, I was sorta wondering: Is there a high-barrier to entry that is restricting blacks or latinos from founding startups? (real or imagined) -- the same thing we see in high end sports such as NASCAR, hockey, or lacrosse that take lots of cash to participate in.
- merrick33 19y ago
  The question posed in the original thread is much different than the one you pose now. No matter what ethnic background you come from you have to ignore the stats and act as if. Now that you clarified the intention of your initial question, it seems you want to know if the percentage of founders of startups correlates with each ethnicities percentage of population. While I don't know the ethnic breakdown of tech startups founders, I know that disparities do exist and they vary by culture, social economic strata and in this case by geographic location. Until recently, the stats for U.S. broadband adoption showed that income and ethnicity were strong indicators. After I finished up my economics degree at UCLA I took a few sociology courses. I recall that in the first half of the 20th century Asian immigrants had a higher percentage of entrepreneurship relatively because of the lack of employment opportunities and discrimination. In the second half of the 20th century that percentage declined. While it's interesting to study the plight of some ethnic groups, it's much more interesting to study how public policy can improve the situation. The wonderful thing for everyone is that the access to information is a great equalizer, and that our parents socio-economic level is less of a predictor of our future than it was when our parents were kids.
kobs 19y ago
Hopefully in the next year or two :-]. If you want to dig even further, there aren't many of us in CS departments either. (I'm aware that not every potential startup-type studies CS) (I'm making a generalization based on my school's CS population. I'm assuming it's similar at other institutions.)
- manvsmachine 19y ago
  I'd suggest that a large part of the reason is the issue of prestige. In America, intelligent black people will tend to choose high prestige, low-risk career paths more often than not. A lot of it is about the uncertainty of failure; In black communities, a lot is expected of the really smart kids. They're seen as not just representing themselves, but also their communities and, to an extent, their race. It sucks, but it's the truth. So a lot of them choose to be doctors, lawyers, etc, because you're viewed differently by society. If we ever get to the point that being a software engineer is viewed in the same light as the aforementioned occupations, I'm sure there would be a sizable increase.
  - aswanson 19y ago
    Heh, I used to think that being an engineer was prestigious.
pius 19y ago
I'm black and I run a technology startup. It's really shocking how many conferences in the Web 2.0 space are incredibly, well, white. Moving forward, I'm going to attend more conferences and workshops, if only to do my little part to make sure that questions like the one posed in this Ask YC title become ridiculous. Speaking of which, I'm going to SXSW Film and Interactive and the Cannes Film Festival, so anyone who'd like to meet up should let me know if they're going!
- wumi 19y ago
  shoot me an email david.adeyalo at gmail
webwright 19y ago
Out of curiosity, why don't you care about Asian founded startups? Or south-Asian (Indian, Pakastani, etc)? Or Middle-Eastern? To answer your actual question, I have met exactly one (am currently a YC founder and was VERY active in the Seattle startup scene, FWIW).
- wumi 19y ago
  I was going for the uncommon social groups, and East Asian, and South Asian founded is definitely not an uncommon breeding ground for startups. As far as middle-eastern, sure, throw them in there, but it was more reference to minority groups in the US -- Black and Latino are pretty prevalent as fars % of US population, and it does not correlate with startups
gscott 19y ago
The Internet is color blind. If anyone has a chance to make it it would be on the Internet. I was watching the "Big Idea" with Donnie Deutsch some months ago and a 10 year old had a great eBay business and relationships with wholesellers. His age was not a limiting factor because he did everything online.
paul 19y ago
http://www.ooyala.com/management http://www.ooyala.com/management
hhm 19y ago
If there are any? There are plenty of them... I'm from Argentina, and here, as in many other latin countries, there are a real lot of local tech startups. Some important companies which started like startups here are Mercado Libre (MELI in Nasdaq), Core Technologies, and Wanako Games (a company in Chile, by Argentinians, recently sold to Vivendi for US$ 10 million). Actually there are lots of incubators for entrepreneurs here, and there are local VCs, and there are many people working on Web 2.0 and general tech stuff. Recently, there was a local Barcamp here in Buenos Aires too. There are many, many local startups here, and of course we are all latino here. So I'm not sure the question makes a lot of sense...
- merrick33 19y ago
  hhm please contact me at: uclawins at gmail dot com -Merrick
pchristensen 19y ago
Reg Braithwaite is a developer at startup Mobile Commons (weblog.raganwald.com www.mcommons.com) Hank Williams is working on an unannounced startup (http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/ http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/ ). They're from Toronto and NYC. Maybe it's a coincidence of demographics - many startups and most of startup culture are in Silicon Valley, most people there are white or Asian.

Tichy 19y ago

I know for a fact that boys and girls are very different. If you don't believe me, just google for porn. I am not saying that women's minds are not wired for startups/maths/whatever (I don't know), but the cultural differences are rooted in biological differences. Women have babies, which is very costly. Hence they need a different mindset (more responsibility, time to take care of kids etc.), they are also very valuable to men, so they can sell their bodies as baby-making machines rather than do startups. Different options in life create different paths... Men have to do something impressive to convince women to carry their babies, hence the startup thing (high risk, but if success, there will be babies).

curi 19y ago
So, your theory is that selection pressure for [various things] resulted in adapted genes. One of the major questions this position has to answer is: why did that selection pressure result in adapted genes instead of adapted memes? Prima facie, it would result in adapted memes, because memes evolve faster -- they have much shorter generations.
- Tichy 19y ago
  Well, I would recommend the book "Why is sex fun" by Jared Diamond. I don't know all the theories anymore, but the gist is that there is/was a biological arms race between men and women. For example, the reason that women have to be inseminated inside their bodies is so that men can not be sure who is the father of the women's babies. Because otherwise, men are prone to killing offspring of other men (at least in the animal kingdom). Now, if a woman sleeps with another man, we still can not be sure that she is not carrying our baby. At least that is one theory, as far as I remember. There are several more aspects that come into play. There actually was one chapter with the theory that men go hunting to impress women (and I would be ready to make the leap and equate hunting with startupping). Gathering would be more energy efficient than hunting, but hunting allows men to come home as bigshots, make a big party, and impress lots of women. That theory was only based on one study of a primitive society, though, so I guess the evidence is not yet very strong. Just a theory... Anyway, a good book to read in my opinion. Other than that, I am not sure I agree to your question. Men and women certainly have different genes, have they not? I think the asymmetry is inherent in the problem of growing a baby inside of your body. Perhaps it would have been possible to allow both men and women to get pregnant, but it might have been too much overhead (although there are animals that can switch gender, and come to think about it, there are human hermaphrodites). Most animals seem to have a difference between men and women - for example the spiders that eat their mates...
  - curi 19y ago
    The point of the question is that, unless you can answer it (generally, or in particular cases), then it implies that once culture existed, culture met all selection pressures. Men and women do have genetic differences, which they had before culture existed. But the thing at issue is whether modern-day, high-level personality features are a genetic difference, or not.
    - Tichy 19y ago
      Culture responds to the genetic preconditions. Of course monogamy, marriage etc are memes, but they exist because of the biological necessity. Culture can't change the biological needs - no matter what culture, babies need to eat.
      - curi 19y ago
        Are you saying you think all reasonable cultures would deal with (respond to) our biology by treating women in such a way that they don't like to do startups as much as men? What is it about female biology which is so adverse to startups that many layers of culture interpretation can't possibly do anything about it?
        Tichy 19y ago
        No, I am not saying that. The biological conditions are changing - there is the pill, there was a guy recently who cloned himself from his own skin, there is genetic testing for fatherhood etc. Things like that might change the scales in the gender war. Even without the technology there are different ways society reacts. Polygamy should in theory raise the value of women (even fewer women available per men if some men have several women). But some societies reacted by putting women behind veils and removing them from the market by force. I can imagine a culture, for example, where men do nothing and just force women to do startups. So it definitely is possible. What I claim, though, is that the current situation in western societies might not be due to repression of women, but due to other factors. And those stem from biological differences, which give men and women different sorts of weapons in the gender war. As the example of life-expectancy shows, it is not clear to me that women are currently getting the worse deal.

angryprofessor 19y ago

> And in particular, it is more repressive of females, and cripples their ability to think more, especially in business and technical areas. Why business and technical areas in particular? Historically, I'd agree with you. But that effect has completely vanished in many fields: law and medicine are two prominent examples. It also partially vanished in technical fields; physics went from 0% to 20% women in the same way that medicine went from 0% to 50%. Why do you think that physics and computer science are more anti-woman than medicine? And for that matter, why is experimental physics less anti-woman than theoretical physics? And similarly, why does environmental engineering have more women than electrical?

curi 19y ago
Traditions are complex and it's hard to trace reasons for them. Which they don't always have, in the sense we normally look for -- they don't always have good reasons for why they were designed/intended to help people. So I don't know specifically why it is that parents, and others, discourage girls from business and technical areas in particular. And I don't know exactly what kind of discouragement is effective -- probably it is not the straightforward kind that does most of the work. As well, it may be some kind of encouragement that matters more than discouragement. Or the process may be much more complex than English is good at capturing in a word. One thing I can tell you is that women working in a field does not imply the problem is solved. First, they might be less skillful, on average. But second, they might have had to put in more effort to achieve the same level of skill, and that could be very hard to detect.
- angryprofessor 19y ago
  >So I don't know specifically why it is that parents, and others, discourage girls from business and technical areas in particular. Not only technical areas, but also particular technical areas. What makes experimental physics less technical than theoretical, and chemistry less technical than physics? Also, if you look at the percentage of women in technical fields, it does look like cultural barriers dropped. I.e., over the same timeframe that cultural barriers dropped in medicine, they dropped similarly in physics/engineering, causing women to increase from about 1970-1990. After 1990, the % women was roughly flat in all fields: in medicine at 50%, in physics at 20%. Basically, womens liberation had the same qualtitative effect on physics that it had on medicine; only the magnitudes differ. This strongly suggests that some other factor is keeping women out of technical fields. It could be cultural, but it's a completely different type of cultural barrier than the one that kept women out of medicine and physics up until the 1990's. It could also be biological, I don't see much evidence for or against that. >One thing I can tell you is that women working in a field does not imply the problem is solved. First, they might be less skillful, on average. But second, they might have had to put in more effort to achieve the same level of skill, and that could be very hard to detect. Lots of difficult to measure things are possible. I'll wait for evidence of them. (*) By the way, I'm using physics/EE as a proxy for all technical fields, since I've been forced to sit through lots of meetings on that topic. Speaking openly in those meetings was frowned upon...
  - curi 19y ago
    It's easy to make up and describe a cultural factor that would explain the data. For example, the previous shift was about how adult women were treated in public -- open discrimination. The second shift will come when parents (and others) treat young children more equally in subtle ways. That's one possible cultural explanation, of many. But for biology, there does not exist a single reasonable explanation that can account for the data. In particular, in must detail by what mechanism the genes effect the personality of adult women. That is, "there is a gene for business" wouldn't suffice, without saying specifically how that gene works.
    - angryprofessor 19y ago
      >It's easy to make up and describe a cultural factor that would explain the data. For example, the previous shift was about how adult women were treated in public -- open discrimination. The second shift will come when parents (and others) treat young children more equally in subtle ways. That's one possible cultural explanation, of many. You still need to explain why this affects physics, but not law. This idea seems very weak when you look at gender gaps within fields. Most people barely know the difference between physics and chemistry (let alone theoretical vs experimental, or condensed matter vs high energy), yet there are gender gaps between them. Compare also web design to programming. How can culture cause a disparity between things that the culture doesn't even know about? >But for biology, there does not exist a single reasonable explanation that can account for the data. In particular, in must detail by what mechanism the genes effect the personality of adult women. That is, "there is a gene for business" wouldn't suffice, without saying specifically how that gene works. For business, aggression would be my best guess. Testosterone is known to cause aggression, and it is also known that men have more of it.
      - curi 19y ago
        > How can culture cause a disparity between things that the culture doesn't even know about? There is all sorts of knowledge in our traditions, which no individual person understands. So, for example, suppose culture contains a trigger which causes parents to be more discouraging of one type of children's book than another, for girls. They could do this without understanding what's going on at all -- all they have to know consciously is that they like one book more than another. Even if we don't know what kinds of books encourage people to become chemists, certainly we can imagine some books pull more in that direction than others. Because, for example, the skills they help create are more useful to doing chemistry, or lead to more trains of thought that bring up chemistry, or are more useful to understanding explanations of why chemistry is interesting and important. This is all very plausible, because we already know that books can help learn skills, help bring up trains of thought, etc, and already know that there are skills which help one become a chemist, there are trains of thought which help one see why becoming a chemist would be nice, etc And 'book' and 'chemistry' can be substituted with other things, like game, toy, activity, law, physics, etc, and still have similar effects. --- By what mechanism does testosterone cause aggressive personalities?

bayareaguy 19y ago

In the US at least, I don't think there is any overt activity preventing women from succeeding in CS-related business and in the past 15 years at least I've seen plenty of women succeed. I think if there are fewer women founders the reason is that fewer women simply choose to go that route. Now outside the US things may be quite different. I am 100% certain that if my 10 year old daughter ever decides to start a CS-related business I'm sure there will be plenty of good role models for her. However her current inclination is to become a school teacher.

curi 19y ago
Why do fewer women choose to go that route? As you say, it is not because they will be less rewarded if they do. Once they are doing a startup, they can get the same rewards men can. So there is still something to explain here.
- bayareaguy 19y ago
  It beats me, but my best guess is that founders get that way first by a) identifying with other founders and b) realizing that nothing is stopping them from succeeding the way they did. I think girls just need more exposure to successful women who can act as role models. It's my belief that time will eventually solve this problem.
  - axod 19y ago
    But as I said before, why do you see it as a problem. It's a problem only if there are women who WANT to be founders, but cannot. Is the fact that fish don't have legs a 'problem'? Only if they long to have legs. (Please don't think I'm likening women to fish, but you get my point hopefuly).
    - bayareaguy 19y ago
      Thats a very good question which probably deserves a better answer than I can offer. But I'll have a go. My first premise is that I think those who achieve success via "fair" competition tend to be better qualified than those who achieve it other ways. My second premise is that over time successful founders should expect to find themselves in positions of power and influence beyond the scope of their initial successes. My last premise is that societies avoid the worst types of social injustice when no single culture or way of thinking dominates the others. While heterogeneous societies may not make as much "progress" as homogeneous ones, they also avoid the worst cases. Based on this, I think we'll have a better society if there are more qualified women at the top, but to have that we need more qualified women at all stages of the competition.

Tichy 19y ago
"And female friends appear to influence young females more than their male friends. " Well if you believe that, then you admit that there is a difference between men and women (within your kind of logic). Of course nurturing has an effect, but the fact remains that men and women are different and have to face different challenges in life. It is not only the 9 months of pregnancy - yes, men could stay at home after pregnancy (now that we have breast pumps for the milk). But there are still several other differences, as I explained elsewhere, not the least the problem of finding a mate to begin with. It is a completely different challenge for men and for women, simply because women can only have a few children, whereas men can have thousands of children in theory. So women have to be more selective etc. Again just one example, but in the sum things like that end up evoking behavioral differences. If all behavioral differences were only the result of nurturing, then why are there no more random variations? Why are there not more societies where all boys behave like girls in our western world, and vice versa? If boys and girls really were equal except for the nurturing and their visible difference, then we should see such variations, because if a society with our boy/girl pattern is stable then the reverse would be equally stable. Edit: I think you yourself mentioned tomboys, so there are people with reversed roles. Therefore, all else being equal, whole islands of societies should develop where roles are mirrored (because apparently the reverse strategy is being evaluated on a regular basis - so if it would be equally successful, it should from time to time become dominant). But they apparently don't develop.
- curi 19y ago
  I said from the outset that our culture treats men and women differently. That includes, among many other things, what gender of friends they are encouraged to have as young children. Why aren't there more variations in culture on Earth? First, there is a lot of shared culture across a lot of the Earth, like Abrahamic religions. Second, perhaps the logic of the situation (e.g. men being stronger) lent itself to certain simple gender roles. If so, that isn't why they still exist today in any form. Third, the general logic of memes can create common points across cultures. Fourth, Earth is a small sample size.
  - Tichy 19y ago
    You yourself mentioned the tomboys. Therefore nature is obviously capable of still evaluating new strategies, even under the tyranny of culture. Therefore it needs explaining why none of those strategies ever reached a significant mass, if their efficiency is the same as the existing ones.
    - curi 19y ago
      Why are you assuming tomboys have anything to do with nature?

curi 19y ago
There exists no explanation, ever invented, by anyone, which details how a gene could code for complex parts of adult personalities, like femininity. You can make things up like how a hormone might umm somehow affect stuff. But that isn't an actual mechanism that goes from start to finish. You don't have to prove that a particular mechanism is in fact the one used by our bodies. You don't need any scientific evidence. Just make one up that actually could work and makes sense. No one has ever done that. End of story. Meanwhile, there do exist possible explanations of how culture could account for the same phenomena (like femininity). They have no rival theories. Thus, all reasonable people should tentatively believe that kind of explanation is correct.
- Tichy 19y ago
  Sorry, that is complete bullshit. There are tons of papers on why genders exists, in terms of evolution theory. There are tons of studies on the effects of various genes - it is a billion dollar industry! Besides, why should I provide the details, if you started with claims of the sort "the number of genes is too small"? Apparently mechanisms exists, humans are being created from mere genes, with lots and lots of differences. I don't think I need to provide any evidence for that - just go out on the street and look at the people. Nobody looks alike, except for the twins. May I ask you: are you a creationist? I really don't want to waste my time... If the hormone level doesn't convince you, let's take body height: can you imagine that body height could make a difference in temper? Again, I don't know, but if there was a study showing it, I would have no trouble believing it. There are actually studies showing that tall men earn more on average than smaller men. The world is a complicated place...
  - curi 19y ago
    I know there are many studies to do with genes, I've read a variety of them. If you believe you know of one which answers my challenge, then feel free to cite it. Am I a creationist? Umm, lol. No. If I was, why would i talk about evolution of both memes and genes? Since you keep bringing up personal issues, maybe we can put them to rest: I am a very (classically) liberal person, a scientifically-oriented atheist, generally a small-l libertarian. Not a science-hating, lunatic, religious conservative. body height might control temper? how? a correlation between height and income doesn't imply height causes income, especially not directly.
    - Tichy 19y ago
      Of course not, but your challenges are a bit off: we are discussing complex systems, that nobody really has a hold of yet. And that includes you and me. I don't know if body height affects temper, I am just giving examples that could e plausible. For example, body height could affect the blood pressure, which would surely affect temper. What is your challenge again, that genes can affect temper? I don't even feel the need to read any papers, really. Body height doesn't convince you, take something else, say some ugly deformation of the body. Might cause depression? Maybe those examples sound ridiculous, but so does the notion that a butterfly on the other end of the world could affect the weather on the other side of the world. Actually I think the butterfly really is an exaggeration, but nevertheless, small changes can have big effects on the outcome in a complex system. So I don't think we even have to argue. Oh yes, and being a woman or a man obviously has a different outcome in temper. You claim that is only cultural, but that doesn't matter: in our current environment (a ka culture), your temper is affected by being a woman or a man. Point proven.
      - curi 19y ago
        Being ugly doesn't cause depression. Though in some cultures ugly people are treated badly, and in some cultures many people have personalities that get depressed when others (wrongly) treat them badly. Now, if you take a culture like that as a given, you can say that ugliness causes depression, and call it a fact. And say you've proven your point. I don't dispute the possibility of making very misleading simplifications of this sort which are true in a sense. But if we want to explain what's going on in our world, it isn't reasonable to take culture as a fixed point. It would be much more fruitful to take our genes as a fixed point, and look at what our culture causes in the context of our genes, and how a different culture would, in that context, cause something else. Doing that, we could come up with some ways our culture should be changed. One way to see what is the true cause, A or B, is to consider what would happen if you changed only one (at the time of its creation). So if we change genes, thousands of years ago, our culture could very well have developed to have the same results, despite the genes being quite different. But if you change imagine our culture developing differently, then having the same genes we have today won't stop it from creating different gender stereotypes.

curi 19y ago
I see that with present technology, mothers need a few month vacation per child at the end of pregnancy and for physical recovery after. This is a fairly minor thing, and it is no reason a culture must assign people wildly different roles and personalities. You'll probably say the mother will want time to raise her kid. But that could equally well be true of the father -- can't you imagine a culture where fathers are expected to stay home more and raise children, and mothers aren't? There's nothing impossible about that. Or it could be treated equally.
- Tichy 19y ago
  Sorry, I was a bit tired - the discussion is not about culture affecting the roles of men and women. Of course it does - we have different cultures on earth with different role models. The discussion was about men and women being different, and I still maintain that is true. Also, I don't think pregnancy is a minor thing. 9 months is 1-2% of the working life time of a women. Besides, other effects might come to play. There is currently another thread about it on news.yc: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/magazine/20wwln-freak-t.html?_r=1&ex=1358485200&en=0d05099c03c97375&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/magazine/20wwln-freak-t.ht... I think effects like that are more likely to be the cause for inequality than repression.
  - curi 19y ago
    You don't need 9 months off -- you can work through a large portion of a pregnancy. Further, for example, you can pay someone else to be pregnant for you. That doesn't cost enough relative to a serious career to make a major difference. And that price can be split with your husband.
    - Tichy 19y ago
      As I said, technological advances might tip the scales - making somebody else carry the child for you was not an option for women a few decades ago. Anyway, isn't the whole discussion completely moot? If you don't accept anything else, then what about physical strength? Can you accept that differences in physical strength can cause differences in behavior, and certainly differences in career choices? I must apologize, but I am tired now, and we have been talking circles for a while now. Let's let it rest (I'll read your answers, if you give any, but I don't intend to reply).
      - curi 19y ago
        Having someone else bear a child for you was an option, millennia ago. It's really not very complicated how to do this: they get pregnant, then give you the child when it is born. That you overlook this demonstrate the power of culture. Doing what I described violates taboos, so it's hard to imagine.
        rms 19y ago
        People still do it with surrogate mothers...
        Tichy 19y ago
        I was talking about the pregnancy itself. Btw., there are other costs for the mother besides missing a few weeks of work: there could be medical problems, the mother might even die. So it is still more costly to have babies for women than it is for men. I seem to remember that women also have a higher risk for infection through many STDs. However, I think we might not disagree as much as you may think: of course, in theory, since the mind can control the body, it is conceivable to create any kind of culture. Maybe we could teach our children to only walk on legs and feet, so you could rightfully claim that "walking upright is just a cultural thing". The "richer" human societies are, the more wasteful cultural habits like that we could afford. I am not sure that society can be reprogrammed in an arbitrary way, though. First of all, it still needs to survive, and it must be able to compete with other societies, even other animals. I think you have to take into consideration WHY culture evolved into it's current state - it has an evolutionary history. I read your statements as such that you think that it was a random whim of nature to give us our current culture. If you are convinced that men and women are equal, then there must have been a 50:50 chance for gender roles being exactly reversed. Do you agree thus far? My claim is merely that it was not random, but that there was a bias due to the differences of men and women, which makes certain cultural habits more effective than others. As you say in your previous post, and I said somewhere else, inventions might tip the scales, and other cultural models could become viable.
        curi 19y ago
        It's strange you would think I had said our current culture is the random whim of nature. I actually think it is a mix of the good ideas and mistakes of people not nature. My comments the entire time have been human-centric in where they attribute causes. Why does our culture have major gender roles that permeate people's personalities, today? It's not because it made logical sense in the past. Whether it did or not then, it does not now. And hasn't for some time. And this has been pointed out on a number of occasions. A particularly well-stated case was made by William Godwin in the 1790s. What happened? People did not listen. They let their biases and closed-mindedness and unreasonableness get in the way of progress. That is the reason gender roles remain entrenched. If people were more thoughtful during the last few hundred years, then we wouldn't have recognizable gender roles today. That's the sort of cause I consider important and meaningful to explaining the present day situation. Another fact of the situation is that parents teach gender roles to their children, whether the children like it or not, and without regard for whether it is helpful or hurtful, useful or not, makes sense or not, etc In a culture which does this, it isn't reasonable to say the gender roles exist because they are correct: the mechanism which perpetuates them does not depend on them being correct, and people are unwilling to change it so that it does.

angryprofessor 19y ago
>...So, for example, suppose culture contains a trigger which causes parents to be more discouraging of one type of children's book than another, for girls. ... I could consider such explanations plausible for explaining gender gaps between law and chemistry. But theoretical high energy physics vs experimental condensed matter physics? That sounds way too specific for a diffuse cultural cue that no one can identify. >By what mechanism does testosterone cause aggressive personalities? Hmm, I thought testosterone increased aggression, but a quick google search suggests the correlation goes the other way. Nevertheless, it is known that most male mammals are more aggressive than females. Whatever the biochemical cause, this trait (in humans) could explain greater success/participation in business.
- curi 19y ago
  But theoretical high energy physics vs experimental condensed matter physics? That sounds way too specific for a diffuse cultural cue that no one can identify. That is hard to explain, with any method. (i.e., the correct explanation appears likely to depend on the complex relationship between lots of details). But I think at least our culture contains knowledge of what different types of physics are, whereas our genes don't. Edit: And we know our culture created different types of physics and has mechanisms for people to learn about them, and to become interested in learning about them. it wouldn't be a huge shock if they had some quirks and biases in them. ----- @testosterone: animals don't have personalities in the sense humans do. I'm asking for an explanation of a mechanism that would work on humans. The primary issue is that humans have general intelligence, by which they normally make decisions. So the mechanism by which testosterone (or something else) works needs to either bypass intelligence somehow (but then you'd have to explain why it still constitutes part of someone's personality), or harness intelligence and work with/through it. No such issues arise in the animal case.
  - angryprofessor 19y ago
    The best explanation I've seen for the disparities within science is reasoning/mathematical ability. String theory () requires the most (all difficult math), experimental condensed matter requires much less. By the way, I should have mentioned that these disparities exist after grad school, not among first year students. They appear after qualifying exams/coursework has weeded out the people who aren't super smart. () I'm not a snobby string theorist, I do computational E&M. But string theorists are the smartest, for reasons I can explain another time. As for hormones: First, animals do have personalities, though they are different from humans. Second, it doesn't need to bypass intelligence. Humans aren't computers with an "emotion" screensaver on the front. Humans make most decisions (partially) emotionally. Starting a business or choosing a field is not a purely rational decision, no matter what most business owners want to think.
    - curi 19y ago
      Do you believe you have any evidence which implies that this emotional view of humans is correct and that mine is not?
      - angryprofessor 19y ago
        No offense, but I'm 99% convinced you've never had a girlfriend. Here is a blog that has links to lots of quantitative evidence. http://www.overcomingbias.com/ http://www.overcomingbias.com/ For more anecdotal evidence, ask your female friends why they support Hillary for president. When they give the rational (but mistaken) response "she is against the war," point out her actual position. Ask if this changes their view. If you believe people are rational, you might be surprised at the results. edit: I don't mean to single out women as irrational. Men are too, though in different ways (a comparable example: lots of anti-war men like McCain). But since we are discussing gender differences, the Hillary example popped into my head.
        curi 19y ago
        Here is one detail about me, for the fun of bursting irrelevant personal assumptions: I, and a majority of my friends, are in favor of the war. Regarding Overcoming Bias, I take it you are referring to the studies about people being very silly, which they have. But those are not relevant to our debate. The issue is not whether people have silly or irrational personalities, but why. And in particular, whether it is best explained as due to ideas, or not. Edit: To reasonably be so certain I haven't had a girlfriend, you must think I am quite young. What about my writing style makes you think I am young?
        angryprofessor 19y ago
        >I, and a majority of my friends, are in favor of the war. I'm not opposed to it either (1). I guess I'm assuming you live on the coast; if you do, it's very surprising if you know multiple people who favored the war. Regardless, my point is that many women make an emotional decision to support Hillary. They then come up with rational sounding reasons after the fact. In any case, the point is that we know for certain that chemicals in the brain influence emotion and decision making (e.g., Ritalin). And the silliness/irrationality described on overcoming bias is mostly emotion defeating reason. Regarding aggression specifically, we know that males are more aggressive both in humans and other mammals. Why do you suspect a non-chemical cause in humans, and a chemical one in other mammals? >To reasonably be so certain I haven't had a girlfriend, you must think I am quite young. What about my writing style makes you think I am young? I have no idea what your age is. I've never met a person who has had a seriously relationship and also believes women don't make extremely emotional decisions. (1) I think freeing Kurdistan was sufficient justification, just as freeing Kuwait was sufficient justification for Iraq 1. At this point, I favor either ending it immediately or doing it right (split the country into small pieces, let them merge together if they want).
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Tichy 19y ago

I think you don't want to get my point. Yes, there are ugly people who are happy. Are you saying that nothing causes depression? Some things apparently do cause depression. I was just giving an example - maybe it is not uglyness, then it is something else. I don't care, but it is something. And no, uglyness does not cause depression - not getting a mate because of ugliness causes depression. But that again is at least in part biological. I know you will deny that, though, because you did so in another threat some time ago. Anyway, if we deny the biology, we could culturally train ourselves to only be attracted to apes, and humanity would die out. I never took culture as a fixed point, in fact I pointed out several alternative cultures, both existent and hypothetical. Now I am waiting for you to describe a hypothetical culture in which things are like you want them to be, so that we can verify that it could really work that way - or perhaps biology would get in the way. Edit: and I don't get why you deny that being ugly causes depression - on average.

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curi 19y ago
We have a culture that (sort of) causes ugly people to get depressed. There is nothing innately depressing about being ugly, the whole idea of being depressed about it, and indeed of what is ugly or pretty, is in our culture. So, our culture has code to have people detect certain traits caused by genes, and act differently in their presence. Just like it detects mountains, and has people act differently in their presence. But no one goes on and on about how mountains control human personalities and determine gender differences (or mountain-raised-near differences).
- Tichy 19y ago
  For lack of statistics on the amount of people doing startups in mountain regions compared to seaside regions, no doubt... I live nearby the mountains and I can tell you that people in the mountains have a very different culture from the people in the flatlands, or at least used to have. I am talking about the farmers - they have different problems to face in the mountains than in the flatlands. So I am sorry but yes, mountains control human personalities and culture.
  - curi 19y ago
    Aha, now we are getting somewhere: genes are a red herring. All the arguments regarding intelligence, DNA, memes, apes, irrelevant. You would have taken the same position about mountains. Or, I take it, hurricanes, earthquake zones, forks, dolls, different types of houses, TV shows, anything (though some things are more or less influential). I guess to start with, you have said living in mountain regions is correlated with different kinds of culture. But you have not said by what mechanism it causes it. Which actually is the same question I kept asking about genes. So please do answer it.
    - Tichy 19y ago
      No, it is not just a correlation. The environment influences the development, that's all - genes are also clever enough to use the information in the environment for a more efficient encoding. Are you asking me to explain in a news comment how the human brain develops from genes, how the brain adapts to the environment, how psychology works, and so on and so on? Not all steps in the development process are fully understood yet, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. Although I guess also yes, I would have claimed that other things than genes can affect human psychology.
      - curi 19y ago
        So, you don't have a complete theory of how the mountain, or gene, causes the personality change. You even agree with me in saying that no one does (as I said earlier). In your words, it's not "fully understood yet". However, you believe that when it is understood, then we will know that genes and mountains do this thing. But how do you know what the conclusion will be, now? Can you make up a possible mechanism of genetic causation? You don't have to prove this actual mechanism is being used, just invent one that could work. I understand the causation up to (for genes) causing more/less of a chemical in the body, larger/smaller muscles, causing defects in the eyes or exceptionally good vision, something like that. But how do you get from there to causing some significant effect in adult personalities? Like causing people to enjoy mountains, be republicans, or consider women bad at business.

curi 19y ago
I agree that many (but not all) women (and men) make bad decisions, act emotionally, make up ad hoc reasons after the fact, etc Regarding aggression, we know that ideas are capable of causing aggression. I don't think this is in dispute: it is a possible cause. But we don't know that chemicals can do it, in humans. No one has suggested a mechanism by which they could. I also don't agree that emotions are a separate thing from intelligence, which sometimes bypasses or overcomes it. I think that emotions are labels for (not amazingly good) ways of thinking -- they, like personality generally, are a part of ones ideas. In this case too, I submit that there is no coherent explanation for how they could be anything else.
- angryprofessor 19y ago
  Ideas could cause aggression, certainly. Lots of things can. However, we DO know chemicals can in humans. Pot and ecs reduce aggression, while meth increase it. I don't know if particular mechanisms are understood, I'm not a biochemist. But empirical observations do show that chemicals (in some way) affect aggression (and other emotions). As for ideas, we don't know the mechanism there either. In fact, we understand the mechanisms of thought less than those of emotion. I can predictably make you and other humans I don't know happy or sad with chemicals; I can't do the same with ideas.
  - curi 19y ago
    Empirical observations show that chemicals have some correlation with emotions, which does not imply that either causes the other. Being able to make people happy with chemicals is consistent with emotions being purely ideas. It just takes a subconscious idea to interpret certain sensations, caused by the chemical, in a positive way. And for this idea to be shared by most people in our culture.
    - angryprofessor 19y ago
      >Empirical observations show that chemicals have some correlation with emotions, which does not imply that either causes the other. Timing and randomization shows that chemicals are the cause. Double blind experiments must have been done at some point, which would show the effect is causative. As for drug effects being cultural, I disagree. Amphetamines also cause aggression in rats, for instance: http://www.springerlink.com/content/p2745782608v6558/ http://www.springerlink.com/content/p2745782608v6558/
      - curi 19y ago
        My reasoning for why chemicals do not cause high-level human personality traits depends on intelligence, so experiments on non-intelligent rats do not contradict my position. --- Double blind experiments (with controls, randomization, etc) do not show causation, they show correlation. You need to have an explanation of what the cause is, or that kind of study doesn't get you anywhere. Because without an explanation, you don't even know what you should be looking for, or have any idea why that correlation exists. BTW, if you know of a reputable, scientifically-oriented source which believes that double blind experiments demonstrate causation in the absence of an explanation, not just demonstrate correlation, I'd like to see it.
        angryprofessor 19y ago
        So you are proposing that chemicals cause aggresion in rats, and aggression in humans, but for a different reason? Seems unlikely to me. Double blind experiments do show causation (ignoring metaphysical discussions). There are 3 possibilities: Chemical -> Behavior, Behavior -> Chemical, or ??? -> (Chemical and behavior). A randomized trial eliminates the latter two possibilities (since chemical is correlated only to a coin flip). Double blind eliminates experimenter bias.
        curi 19y ago
        So suppose we are studying sad people, and we randomly give some of them a chemical, in a controlled and double blind way. And those people become happy, and the others don't. Then, it could be that the chemical somehow causes happiness. Or it could be that the chemical causes memories of one's children, and everyone in the study has happy memories of their children. So, the causation is still in doubt. Many explanations are consistent with the observed data. --- Yes I am proposing that chemicals correlate with "aggression" in humans and rats for different reasons. But I don't accept that the thing called "aggression" is the same thing in humans, and in rats. To help illustrate why not, consider aggressive behavior by video game characters. Same word, but not the same phenomenon -- in that case, no emotion is present, and the cause is some C code.