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What happened to the author of the blog in regards to Google Buzz was inexcusable, but had I encountered her writing in any other context I probably wouldn't ha

by tsally 17y ago

What happened to the author of the blog in regards to Google Buzz was inexcusable, but had I encountered her writing in any other context I probably wouldn't have responded well. In case you haven't caught on, she's a pretty crazy feminist. A choice quote from her blog: In this space, women’s experiences are acknowledged as real and legitimate (men’s, too, but we talk about women a lot more). In this space, biological or evolutionary explanations for behavior are considered to be socially motivated. If you disagree with any of these statements, this is not the space for you. The idea that biology plays no role in behavior is just ridiculous and scientifically disproven. She's advocating a far left feminist idea that your biological sex has no impact on your gender, that there is only a socially constructed gender. In reality our gender is a combination of both social and biological pressures. It's the worst kind of feminist that doesn't even bother to read Wikipedia [1, 2]. I deal pretty extensively in gender issues in courses outside of my CS curriculum and this woman is uninformed and misleading in a lot of the stuff she writes. Long story short, she's had her 15 minutes of fame and was the impetuous for an important movement against Google. But I wont be reading any more of her writing. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_of_gender#Differences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_of_gender#Differences [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_intelligence#Specific_abilities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_intelligence#Specific_a... EDIT: As I have said several times in the past few hours, her concerns about privacy are completely valid. Please do not take this post to mean that they are not. I'm just pointing out that she holds several views that are not factual. I give one such view as an example in this post. EDIT2: Clarified gender/sex wording. Changed "She's advocating a far left feminist idea that there is no such thing as having a biological sex, only a socially constructed gender" to what is currently there.

aw3c2 17y ago
I so agree, this is a good example of her confusion too http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/a-daily-dose-of-sexism/ http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/a-daily-dose-of-sexism/
lsc 17y ago
I think it's pretty dangerous to ignore people complaining about privacy because they hold weird political positions.
- tsally 17y ago
  Agreed; that's not at all what I'm saying. See my edit. I've made several posts supporting her position on Google Buzz in the past few hours. You'll notice that I lead off my post with an expression of support for her. It's the other 99% of her blog that I'm criticizing. Also, her view is not a political position any more than rejecting evolution is a political position.
  - lsc 17y ago
    Much like the evolution debate, does it really matter? I mean, if we're trying to write software, build a business or otherwise live our lives, does it matter where we think we came from, or how much of our behavior we think descends from what bits of our biology? Personally, I find both those questions about as useful as trying to figure out your behavior based on tracing the racial characteristics of your ancestors; I mean, I think most people would agree that your ancestor's DNA effects you in some way, but it just seems like a poor way of getting to know you.
    - derefr 17y ago
      It's not about getting to know other people, it's about getting to know yourself, and realize your inbuilt biological and evolutionary biases so that you may balance for them. Pretending your cognitive software is hardware-neutral is just making those biases something you "don't know that you don't know."
    - tsally 17y ago
      On a philosophical level you may be right, and you make an interesting argument. :) My only goal was to point out the factual error in believing that there is no biological component of behavior.
    - araneae 17y ago
      Yes, it does, because a correct understanding of human behavior is extremely important for design of economic and political systems... and even in finding a significant other. Much the way that an understanding of evolution is critical to prevent the spread and creation of multi-drug resistant bacteria. We created MRSA through our ignorance and we're not going to fix it by pretending evolution doesn't happen.
YuriNiyazov 17y ago
You know, comments like yours is why I keep on coming back to HN. I went to her "About this blog" page, and was reading quite happily until I came to the exact sentence that you are quoting, and then stopped reading, came here and found your comment. I can agree with a significant amount of far-leftism, but social construction of biology is where I draw the line.
_delirium 17y ago
I read that particular phrase as a slightly weaker argument: a claim that when people put forth biological or evolutionary explanations for behavior, they usually have social reasons for doing so, as opposed to scientific ones. That is, they have a political or social claim they want to make, and cloak it in scientific rhetoric. Oddly, some prominent evolutionary biologists take that position, too; Stephen Jay Gould's criticisms of sociobiology sometimes fall along those lines.
- tsally 17y ago
  Even if you interpret it that way, she isn't qualified to reject the body of scientific biological research because she thinks the authors have ulterior motives. Such a claim would require strong evidence. Are there scientists with agendas? Yes. But on the whole, I think you can be pretty confident of objectivity. Gould is a relevant example, but he didn't reject the influence of biology. He simply rejected the idea of determinism based on our biology [1]. I don't think our biology determines us either, but we'd be fools not to take it into account. EDIT: A choice quote from Gould's piece: We are not denying that there are genetic components to human behavior. But we suspect that human biological universals are to be discovered more in the generalities of eating, excreting and sleeping than in such specific and highly variable habits as warfare, sexual exploitation of women and the use of money as a medium of exchange. What Wilson's book illustrates to us is the enormous difficulty in separating out not only the effects of environment (e.g., cultural transmission) but also the personal and social class prejudice of the researcher. Wilson joins the long parade of biological determinists whose work has served to buttress the institutions of their society by exonerating them from responsibility for social problems. Similarly, I don't support using biology as an excuse for sexist behavior. But denying that biology affects behavior is not scientifically accurate. [1] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9017?sess=305fe41afae729849e1e7eb4b004bb81 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9017?sess=305fe41afae729849e...
JulianMorrison 17y ago
I expect she is just tired of debating lazy gender-essentialists and the non-mathematically-rigorous kind of EvoPsych Just So Story author. For counterweighting to your links, consider reading this http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2YUdkUtoyqIC http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2YUdkUtoyqIC
- ramchip 17y ago
  lazy gender-essentialists and the non-mathematically-rigorous kind of EvoPsych Just So Story author My parser choked on this. She's tired of debating who/what?
  - JulianMorrison 17y ago
    lazy gender-essentialists = the kind of people who make dogmatic pronouncements of the form "women are x" without scientific cites (or with old, outdated science that conveniently backs their point) the non-mathematically-rigorous kind of EvoPsych Just So Story author = the kind of damn fool who makes a story like "berries are red, women needed to gather them in prehistory, and that's why women prefer pink" based on a weak study on the color preferences of a small handful of women. Evolutionary Psychology is not an excuse to invent vaguely plausible evolutionary explanations and call them scientific. (The Just So Stories are Rudyard Kipling's Lamarckian fantasy tales of how creatures attained their present form.)

by tsally 17y ago

aw3c2 17y ago

I so agree, this is a good example of her confusion too http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/a-daily-dose-of-sexism/ http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/a-daily-dose-of-sexism/

lsc 17y ago

I think it's pretty dangerous to ignore people complaining about privacy because they hold weird political positions.

tsally 17y ago
Agreed; that's not at all what I'm saying. See my edit. I've made several posts supporting her position on Google Buzz in the past few hours. You'll notice that I lead off my post with an expression of support for her. It's the other 99% of her blog that I'm criticizing. Also, her view is not a political position any more than rejecting evolution is a political position.
- lsc 17y ago
  Much like the evolution debate, does it really matter? I mean, if we're trying to write software, build a business or otherwise live our lives, does it matter where we think we came from, or how much of our behavior we think descends from what bits of our biology? Personally, I find both those questions about as useful as trying to figure out your behavior based on tracing the racial characteristics of your ancestors; I mean, I think most people would agree that your ancestor's DNA effects you in some way, but it just seems like a poor way of getting to know you.
  - derefr 17y ago
    It's not about getting to know other people, it's about getting to know yourself, and realize your inbuilt biological and evolutionary biases so that you may balance for them. Pretending your cognitive software is hardware-neutral is just making those biases something you "don't know that you don't know."
  - tsally 17y ago
    On a philosophical level you may be right, and you make an interesting argument. :) My only goal was to point out the factual error in believing that there is no biological component of behavior.
  - araneae 17y ago
    Yes, it does, because a correct understanding of human behavior is extremely important for design of economic and political systems... and even in finding a significant other. Much the way that an understanding of evolution is critical to prevent the spread and creation of multi-drug resistant bacteria. We created MRSA through our ignorance and we're not going to fix it by pretending evolution doesn't happen.

YuriNiyazov 17y ago

You know, comments like yours is why I keep on coming back to HN. I went to her "About this blog" page, and was reading quite happily until I came to the exact sentence that you are quoting, and then stopped reading, came here and found your comment. I can agree with a significant amount of far-leftism, but social construction of biology is where I draw the line.

_delirium 17y ago

I read that particular phrase as a slightly weaker argument: a claim that when people put forth biological or evolutionary explanations for behavior, they usually have social reasons for doing so, as opposed to scientific ones. That is, they have a political or social claim they want to make, and cloak it in scientific rhetoric. Oddly, some prominent evolutionary biologists take that position, too; Stephen Jay Gould's criticisms of sociobiology sometimes fall along those lines.

tsally 17y ago
Even if you interpret it that way, she isn't qualified to reject the body of scientific biological research because she thinks the authors have ulterior motives. Such a claim would require strong evidence. Are there scientists with agendas? Yes. But on the whole, I think you can be pretty confident of objectivity. Gould is a relevant example, but he didn't reject the influence of biology. He simply rejected the idea of determinism based on our biology [1]. I don't think our biology determines us either, but we'd be fools not to take it into account. EDIT: A choice quote from Gould's piece: We are not denying that there are genetic components to human behavior. But we suspect that human biological universals are to be discovered more in the generalities of eating, excreting and sleeping than in such specific and highly variable habits as warfare, sexual exploitation of women and the use of money as a medium of exchange. What Wilson's book illustrates to us is the enormous difficulty in separating out not only the effects of environment (e.g., cultural transmission) but also the personal and social class prejudice of the researcher. Wilson joins the long parade of biological determinists whose work has served to buttress the institutions of their society by exonerating them from responsibility for social problems. Similarly, I don't support using biology as an excuse for sexist behavior. But denying that biology affects behavior is not scientifically accurate. [1] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9017?sess=305fe41afae729849e1e7eb4b004bb81 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9017?sess=305fe41afae729849e...

JulianMorrison 17y ago

I expect she is just tired of debating lazy gender-essentialists and the non-mathematically-rigorous kind of EvoPsych Just So Story author. For counterweighting to your links, consider reading this http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2YUdkUtoyqIC http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2YUdkUtoyqIC

ramchip 17y ago
lazy gender-essentialists and the non-mathematically-rigorous kind of EvoPsych Just So Story author My parser choked on this. She's tired of debating who/what?
- JulianMorrison 17y ago
  lazy gender-essentialists = the kind of people who make dogmatic pronouncements of the form "women are x" without scientific cites (or with old, outdated science that conveniently backs their point) the non-mathematically-rigorous kind of EvoPsych Just So Story author = the kind of damn fool who makes a story like "berries are red, women needed to gather them in prehistory, and that's why women prefer pink" based on a weak study on the color preferences of a small handful of women. Evolutionary Psychology is not an excuse to invent vaguely plausible evolutionary explanations and call them scientific. (The Just So Stories are Rudyard Kipling's Lamarckian fantasy tales of how creatures attained their present form.)