9 ms·

At the risk of being divisive, this will generally only work if you're white, if you're a minority or a woman, there's way more pushback on all those things, ev

At the risk of being divisive, this will generally only work if you're white, if you're a minority or a woman, there's way more pushback on all those things, even when you're right. Seen it many times.

trhway 10y ago
>if you're a minority or a woman for hundreds of thousands of years having your tribe represented by a confident male (selected from the majority of the tribe) was beneficial (at least we can conclude that now based on the survivor bias principle) We still have those cave man instincts with us to a high degree. The point of civilization development is to reign in cave man instincts inside and among us. Seems that it takes time.
- jcranmer 10y ago
  The principle of sexual inequality (and male superiority) appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon--arising only around the time of agriculture. Even subsequent to the development of agricultures, plenty of civilizations have practiced matrilineal succession, with no apparent cost to their dealings with neighboring societies (indeed, some even flourished at the expense of others--consider the Iroquois, for example).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - trhway 10y ago
    >The principle of sexual inequality (and male superiority) appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon Recent? Even gorilla have males bigger (and thus leading the pack) than females and so far prehistoric humans are known to have been that way too. It is exactly the rise of civilization(agriculture, technology, complex social structure, etc) which allowed for situations with female leadership.
    - noobiemcfoob 10y ago
      Gorilla males are about 50% larger compared to human males being about 20% larger. There is much in our anatomy that implies humans behaved more as polyamorous tribes than solitary male harems. If you're really interested, look up "Sex at Dawn"
  - Shubley 10y ago
    I'm sorry but this is pure myth. There has never been a human society where primary political/executive power was vested in women, except some developed and recent examples. The idea of tribes controlled by women just never happened; not once. It's wishful revisionism motivated by modern politics. Pinker discusses this a bit in this speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw And of course other have noted the male dominance in pretty much all the similar primate species. Human are brute animals, nothing more. And no, just because (pre)historically it was this way doesn't mean I'm saying it ought to be this way everywhere and forever. Natural != ideal.
    - belorn 10y ago
      You have a small farm community of four houses, a few hundred/thousands years ago. One of the families has a animal die and is in dire need for help. Who do they ask for help? Some warrior, sitting on a iron throne and passing down judgment from high in one the houses, or is it the old women of the village who carries the memories of who did whom a favor and is responsible for the community threads that binds the families together. Who has the power to make the decision?
      - trhway 10y ago
        >Some warrior, sitting on a iron throne and passing down judgment from high in one the houses, or is it the old women of the village who carries the memories of who did whom a favor and is responsible for the community threads that binds the families together. Who has the power to make the decision? if recent thousand of years of history is any guidance - the warrior on the throne will be asked to punish the witch[es] (some of those old women) for the curse that caused the animal to die, and the property of those witches would be shared between the warrior and the family of the reporter.
        belorn 10y ago
        While the waves of witch trial came and decline, that is mostly a 15th and early 16th centuries concept done by the church and not by small farm communities. There is no "thousand of years of history" where farm communities regularly killed the elder women, and its common theme in non-European/Christian history. Its kind of telling if current view of history is that all elder women was hunted down and killed as witches under a single religion.
- bjourne 10y ago
  Anthropologists have studied hunter gatherer tribes for a long time and it is not as simple as those with the most confidence becomes leaders. For example, among the San people tribe leadership is shared by the elders. And anyone can become an elder by surviving til old age. In day to day tasks, such as during hunting, who leads the hunt is determined on a rotating schedule so that all men get to lead it from time to time. Designated leaders probably didn't become the norm until about 4000 bc when early civilizations arose. Another interesting tidbit noted by many anthropologists is that boasting is strictly forbidden. E.g if a tribesman catches a big prey, he must be humble and can not brag about how good of a hunter he is. It is different from the Western World, in which bragging is expected and necessary for leaders (case in point: Trump).
  - dpark 10y ago
    >Another interesting tidbit noted by many anthropologists is that boasting is strictly forbidden. Are you saying that this applies to every tribe in the world? Because if so, I don't buy it. It's too far fetched that every tribe in the world except everyone who advanced past the hunter gatherer stage would share this cultural trait. Aside from it being unreasonable that all tribes would share this trait, it would also seem to imply that modest people cannot advance to the modern age, which is also difficult to swallow.
    - bjourne 10y ago
      No, I should have clarified that my comment was only about the San people, aka Bushmen. Those people are the closest to how humans lived for thousands of years before they wandered out of Africa. I don't think other primitive peoples have designated leadership roles either, like we do, but I'm not sure.
      - dpark 10y ago
        Ok. I don't have any trouble believing that could be a cultural trait of those peoples. Thanks for clarifying.
Ixiaus 10y ago
Perhaps a more accurate characterization instead of specifically being white, having an <attribute> of the dominant category of people in a culture (I'm using the word culture broadly, there are cases in which I do not think white males are the dominant nor revered category). When you have a dominant group of people that share an attribute, I think anchoring and other cognitive biases will always play an influential role. > Seen it many times. Not sure if being intentionally humorous here, but I think it's funny regardless!
refurb 10y ago
if you're a minority or a woman, there's way more pushback on all those things My counter to that is Theranos.
- trhway 10y ago
  you should meet Holmes the Father, Kissinger, Mattis, Schultz, Draper - and see who among them is a minority or a woman :)
- marricks 10y ago
  Trustfund wasn't citing a study or anything, but still I don't think an appropriate counter to a perceived trend is one cherry picked point of data.
  - benchaney 10y ago
    That is fair, but the burden of proof is on trustfund, so it doesn't really matter how rigorous GP is.
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  Except that alot of her image was modeled on Steve Jobs, who was a confident male figure, though not the same image as a more traditional CEO.
pfarnsworth 10y ago
First off, this is false. I've seen plenty of races and women succeed unworthily because they talk with extreme confidence. Secondly, are you only talking about the US because you're American? Because there are plenty of other countries in this world, and it's true in all of them.
- trustfundbaby 10y ago
  > Secondly, are you only talking about the US because you're American? yep.
- jtedward 10y ago
  You say this so confidently, I almost believe it.
- Y_Y 10y ago
  If I hadn't seen this comment I would have posted something similar. I can't see why it should be downvoted.
marcosdumay 10y ago
Getting a ride about the Bayesian vs. frequentist discussion also on the front page... I'd say people use confidence as evidence for competence. Yet, that only make them adjust their priors, and biased people have some extreme priors.
1337biz 10y ago
Oh great, a race and gender discussion based on an internet user's personal opinion. That's going to be fascinating!
- dentemple 10y ago
  I can't wait for the exciting source-based debate (with citations!) that is sure to happen.
  - therpe1 10y ago
    Got to admit everytime I see people seriously say something like "current child-rearing practices" I laugh out loud. I mean, is there a book somewhere that was given to everybody but me? A really popular movie on Netflix that I missed? Man, where was I when "current child-rearing practices" were spelled out. But seriously there's no such thing. It's a fantasy that exists only in the speaker's head and is projected into the world. It has no basis in reality. Which is really why people ought to cite sources because nobody cares about your paranoid fantasies.
sh6678 10y ago
I don't think its a race issue so much as a physical appearance issue. Height, attractiveness, facial structure, body size. Certain people look "presidential" and they command a lot of automatic respect just based on appearance. There are plenty of minority people that have this quality. There are plenty of white males lacking this quality. Look-ism is the huge issue that is almost never talked about. In most companies you could probably better judge how successful new hires will be just by how they look in a video of them talking vs a sample of their work or credentials.
- Shubley 10y ago
  Let's also not forget ageism, heightism, voice-ism (positive affect of rich voices).
  - projektir 10y ago
    And ableism and... There probably needs to be a general purpose word for this...
    - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
      I gather kyriarchy was coined to serve this purpose, but I don't think it's widely used.
      - lovingKindness 10y ago
        Fascism is the general term. Judging anyone by anything other than what is called for when doing the actual work is inherently superficial and therefore fascist (fascia, on the face). Fairly synergistic connection there regarding the popularity of a certain face-themed webpage. We can make up labels all day to make it fresh or more precise, but the logos/pathos/ethos of the term 'fascist' is sound in every instance of excluding or including someone based on anything but propensity. It is interesting that we can't acknowledge it, like we are all so wrapped up in finding our niche that when we do, anything that would jeopardize that is immediately regarded as false. Like, who would you be if you aren't actually as talented as you think you are? But I digress.
bsder 10y ago
Dunno. Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina seem to be quite good counterexamples to your thesis.
BurningFrog 10y ago
If that's true, it's a good argument for hiring minorities and women, since you would not be burdened by incompetent leaders.

trhway 10y ago

>if you're a minority or a woman for hundreds of thousands of years having your tribe represented by a confident male (selected from the majority of the tribe) was beneficial (at least we can conclude that now based on the survivor bias principle) We still have those cave man instincts with us to a high degree. The point of civilization development is to reign in cave man instincts inside and among us. Seems that it takes time.

jcranmer 10y ago
The principle of sexual inequality (and male superiority) appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon--arising only around the time of agriculture. Even subsequent to the development of agricultures, plenty of civilizations have practiced matrilineal succession, with no apparent cost to their dealings with neighboring societies (indeed, some even flourished at the expense of others--consider the Iroquois, for example).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- trhway 10y ago
  >The principle of sexual inequality (and male superiority) appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon Recent? Even gorilla have males bigger (and thus leading the pack) than females and so far prehistoric humans are known to have been that way too. It is exactly the rise of civilization(agriculture, technology, complex social structure, etc) which allowed for situations with female leadership.
  - noobiemcfoob 10y ago
    Gorilla males are about 50% larger compared to human males being about 20% larger. There is much in our anatomy that implies humans behaved more as polyamorous tribes than solitary male harems. If you're really interested, look up "Sex at Dawn"
- Shubley 10y ago
  I'm sorry but this is pure myth. There has never been a human society where primary political/executive power was vested in women, except some developed and recent examples. The idea of tribes controlled by women just never happened; not once. It's wishful revisionism motivated by modern politics. Pinker discusses this a bit in this speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw And of course other have noted the male dominance in pretty much all the similar primate species. Human are brute animals, nothing more. And no, just because (pre)historically it was this way doesn't mean I'm saying it ought to be this way everywhere and forever. Natural != ideal.
  - belorn 10y ago
    You have a small farm community of four houses, a few hundred/thousands years ago. One of the families has a animal die and is in dire need for help. Who do they ask for help? Some warrior, sitting on a iron throne and passing down judgment from high in one the houses, or is it the old women of the village who carries the memories of who did whom a favor and is responsible for the community threads that binds the families together. Who has the power to make the decision?
    - trhway 10y ago
      >Some warrior, sitting on a iron throne and passing down judgment from high in one the houses, or is it the old women of the village who carries the memories of who did whom a favor and is responsible for the community threads that binds the families together. Who has the power to make the decision? if recent thousand of years of history is any guidance - the warrior on the throne will be asked to punish the witch[es] (some of those old women) for the curse that caused the animal to die, and the property of those witches would be shared between the warrior and the family of the reporter.
      - belorn 10y ago
        While the waves of witch trial came and decline, that is mostly a 15th and early 16th centuries concept done by the church and not by small farm communities. There is no "thousand of years of history" where farm communities regularly killed the elder women, and its common theme in non-European/Christian history. Its kind of telling if current view of history is that all elder women was hunted down and killed as witches under a single religion.
bjourne 10y ago
Anthropologists have studied hunter gatherer tribes for a long time and it is not as simple as those with the most confidence becomes leaders. For example, among the San people tribe leadership is shared by the elders. And anyone can become an elder by surviving til old age. In day to day tasks, such as during hunting, who leads the hunt is determined on a rotating schedule so that all men get to lead it from time to time. Designated leaders probably didn't become the norm until about 4000 bc when early civilizations arose. Another interesting tidbit noted by many anthropologists is that boasting is strictly forbidden. E.g if a tribesman catches a big prey, he must be humble and can not brag about how good of a hunter he is. It is different from the Western World, in which bragging is expected and necessary for leaders (case in point: Trump).
- dpark 10y ago
  >Another interesting tidbit noted by many anthropologists is that boasting is strictly forbidden. Are you saying that this applies to every tribe in the world? Because if so, I don't buy it. It's too far fetched that every tribe in the world except everyone who advanced past the hunter gatherer stage would share this cultural trait. Aside from it being unreasonable that all tribes would share this trait, it would also seem to imply that modest people cannot advance to the modern age, which is also difficult to swallow.
  - bjourne 10y ago
    No, I should have clarified that my comment was only about the San people, aka Bushmen. Those people are the closest to how humans lived for thousands of years before they wandered out of Africa. I don't think other primitive peoples have designated leadership roles either, like we do, but I'm not sure.
    - dpark 10y ago
      Ok. I don't have any trouble believing that could be a cultural trait of those peoples. Thanks for clarifying.

Ixiaus 10y ago

Perhaps a more accurate characterization instead of specifically being white, having an <attribute> of the dominant category of people in a culture (I'm using the word culture broadly, there are cases in which I do not think white males are the dominant nor revered category). When you have a dominant group of people that share an attribute, I think anchoring and other cognitive biases will always play an influential role. > Seen it many times. Not sure if being intentionally humorous here, but I think it's funny regardless!

refurb 10y ago

if you're a minority or a woman, there's way more pushback on all those things My counter to that is Theranos.

trhway 10y ago
you should meet Holmes the Father, Kissinger, Mattis, Schultz, Draper - and see who among them is a minority or a woman :)
marricks 10y ago
Trustfund wasn't citing a study or anything, but still I don't think an appropriate counter to a perceived trend is one cherry picked point of data.
- benchaney 10y ago
  That is fair, but the burden of proof is on trustfund, so it doesn't really matter how rigorous GP is.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
Except that alot of her image was modeled on Steve Jobs, who was a confident male figure, though not the same image as a more traditional CEO.

pfarnsworth 10y ago

First off, this is false. I've seen plenty of races and women succeed unworthily because they talk with extreme confidence. Secondly, are you only talking about the US because you're American? Because there are plenty of other countries in this world, and it's true in all of them.

trustfundbaby 10y ago
> Secondly, are you only talking about the US because you're American? yep.
jtedward 10y ago
You say this so confidently, I almost believe it.
Y_Y 10y ago
If I hadn't seen this comment I would have posted something similar. I can't see why it should be downvoted.

marcosdumay 10y ago

Getting a ride about the Bayesian vs. frequentist discussion also on the front page... I'd say people use confidence as evidence for competence. Yet, that only make them adjust their priors, and biased people have some extreme priors.

1337biz 10y ago

Oh great, a race and gender discussion based on an internet user's personal opinion. That's going to be fascinating!

dentemple 10y ago
I can't wait for the exciting source-based debate (with citations!) that is sure to happen.
- therpe1 10y ago
  Got to admit everytime I see people seriously say something like "current child-rearing practices" I laugh out loud. I mean, is there a book somewhere that was given to everybody but me? A really popular movie on Netflix that I missed? Man, where was I when "current child-rearing practices" were spelled out. But seriously there's no such thing. It's a fantasy that exists only in the speaker's head and is projected into the world. It has no basis in reality. Which is really why people ought to cite sources because nobody cares about your paranoid fantasies.

sh6678 10y ago

I don't think its a race issue so much as a physical appearance issue. Height, attractiveness, facial structure, body size. Certain people look "presidential" and they command a lot of automatic respect just based on appearance. There are plenty of minority people that have this quality. There are plenty of white males lacking this quality. Look-ism is the huge issue that is almost never talked about. In most companies you could probably better judge how successful new hires will be just by how they look in a video of them talking vs a sample of their work or credentials.

Shubley 10y ago
Let's also not forget ageism, heightism, voice-ism (positive affect of rich voices).
- projektir 10y ago
  And ableism and... There probably needs to be a general purpose word for this...
  - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
    I gather kyriarchy was coined to serve this purpose, but I don't think it's widely used.
    - lovingKindness 10y ago
      Fascism is the general term. Judging anyone by anything other than what is called for when doing the actual work is inherently superficial and therefore fascist (fascia, on the face). Fairly synergistic connection there regarding the popularity of a certain face-themed webpage. We can make up labels all day to make it fresh or more precise, but the logos/pathos/ethos of the term 'fascist' is sound in every instance of excluding or including someone based on anything but propensity. It is interesting that we can't acknowledge it, like we are all so wrapped up in finding our niche that when we do, anything that would jeopardize that is immediately regarded as false. Like, who would you be if you aren't actually as talented as you think you are? But I digress.

bsder 10y ago

Dunno. Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina seem to be quite good counterexamples to your thesis.

BurningFrog 10y ago

If that's true, it's a good argument for hiring minorities and women, since you would not be burdened by incompetent leaders.