16 ms·

Gender Bias: It Is Worse Than You Think

32 points by wglb 10y ago

accountface 10y ago
I believe gender bias is a huge issue, but I wonder if the riddle was worded differently if the responses would be different: >Here’s an old riddle. If you haven’t heard it, give yourself time to answer before reading past this paragraph: a father and daughter are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The daughter is rushed to the hospital; just as she’s about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, “I can’t operate—that girl is my daughter!” Explain… I'd also be curious to see what the results would be if it was a mother/daughter crash — I suspect that most people would say the father is the surgeon (rather than saying the girl has two moms), but I'd like to see at what rate. My answer in the original question was two dads, but I'm not entirely sure if I misinterpreted "he's about to go under the knife" originally, or if I'm biased (I also might want to think I misinterpreted it because I don't want to be biased). The article provides a lot of additional evidence of bias. I just found the first riddle interesting.
- Cuuugi 10y ago
  Maybe the car cash duo was a husband and wife (their relationship isn't explicitly specified) and the surgeon was her father.... You ageist.
- abraves10001 10y ago
  I thought the child was illegitimate or adopted and the doctor was the biological father. I am pretty sure I failed the bias test, regardless.
- macintux 10y ago
  My parents asked me that riddle after seeing it on (IIRC) "All in the Family" when I was ~10. I failed miserably, disappointing my mother.
  - sushisource 10y ago
    The whole riddle is set up to be intentionally difficult. The way it primes you with "father" and "son" as parent comment mentions. I think there's some validity to it, but I think it's a clever linguistic trick more than anything.
    - whoyawn 10y ago
      I actually read the parent comment before going to the article and I still had a hard time figuring out the answer. It may be because I was primed with the fact it's a "riddle"; the entire time I was trying to come up with a clever answer rather than thinking the surgeon was the mother. Father+daughter vs father+son didn't have much of an effect, but bias was probably present, nevertheless.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  the basis of the riddle is the widely held assumption that the surgeon is is male, which is more or less justified based on demographics, even if it is a biased assumption. evidence: https://datausa.io/profile/soc/291060/#age_gender https://datausa.io/profile/soc/291060/#age_gender now, it's an interesting riddle because it exposes the way we often generalize from demographics even when there are reasonable contextual clues that our generalization isn't accurate. however, I don't go so far as to call this a prejudicial kind of bias. I don't really think that the tendency to generalize from observations is unreasonable or necessarily connected to prejudicial or exclusionary actions.
- Infernal 10y ago
  I read this comment before the article. I also assumed that the surgeon was male - my best guess at an answer to the riddle was in the wording: the people in the car crash were "a father and daughter" not "a father and his daughter", so my answer was that the man killed in the crash was "a father" and not "the girl's father", thereby allowing the possibility of the surgeon to be the girl's father.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
ar15saveslives 10y ago
> The importance of diversity is beyond reasonable doubt, isn’t it? Why?
- gdix 10y ago
  Translation: "if you don't agree with this, you are not being reasonable"
  - ar15saveslives 10y ago
    Great argument, can be applied to anything.
    - gdix 10y ago
      Well yeah, anything that someone says is "beyond a reasonable doubt" when they're referring to something that as nuanced as "diversity".
- 7952 10y ago
  It could give a greater range of insight and experience to a problem. Also, it is easy to optimise for diversity, and fiendishly difficult to optimise for other more subtle aspects of human behaviour.
  - self-diversity 10y ago
    you've hypothesized reasons why something should be automatically accepted, which is funny in cosmic poetry sense, but not terribly evidentiary.
    - 7952 10y ago
      How can you provide evidence to support a philosophical viewpoint? Such questions are unavoidably subjective.
      - 10y ago
socialconstruct 10y ago
What is the likelihood that even a minute's consideration is given that this represents some sort of natural thought pattern that we can just learn to ignore, like other forms of tribalism? My guess would be no chance at all. There's a real dedication to the idea that this sort of thing is all socially constructed despite literal decades of no progress at all in any way you would expect if such an idea were true.
onuralp 10y ago
Here is the modern version of the riddle: if you are to analyze your e-mail responses (e.g., tone, wording), do you notice any gender bias? I was intrigued with the story[0] where the colleagues of opposite gender swapped their names when signing their client e-mails, and the responses they received were heavily gender biased. While this may be anecdotal, I would not be surprised if this is more prevalent than (hopefully) appreciated. [0] https://twitter.com/i/moments/839950218099576832 https://twitter.com/i/moments/839950218099576832
- gdix 10y ago
  I think the TLDR of the original article can be summed by "there is bias even in the interpretation of bias-measuring studies". The fact that people read this story and conclude "well the only variable at play here is gender, therefore: sexism". 1. This is anecdote. One event. 2. The story-teller is introducing his own bias. 3. The reader has certain preconceptions about gender and bias. While this is an interesting anecdote, a skeptic should take this whole situation with a grain of salt.
- gnicholas 10y ago
  Thanks for the link — very interesting. I had an opposite experience when my wife and I had some issues with the airbnb we were renting for several months. We used my wife's account since the trip was for her business travel. But I managed all the communication electronically, including when some issues arose. I was also the person who talked with the host in-person when she showed up to fix some of the issues (broken heating, no smoke detectors). As she was leaving, she said: "your wife is much more polite than you". I asked how she would know, and she referenced the online communication. She was surprised to learn that it was in fact me that she had been corresponding with. I do not minimize the impact of gender on workplace experience, which is certainly more important than my housing-related anecdote. But it would be interesting to see what the differences are in various types of interactions, and where different genders are treated better or worse.
gnicholas 10y ago
> But why only choose to study all-white groups and groups of two whites and one black? What about the other two possibilities: all black and two blacks and one white? Did this not even occur to the researchers? I could imagine that all-black do the best, or that two black and one white do the worst. Who knows. The sin here seems to be not even considering all the four combinations. The author fails to consider the possibility that there were not enough black students to do a study of this format. The university where the study was done is (currently) roughly 5% black and 44% white [1]. Given this breakdown, it is likely that the dearth of black students resulted in the study's design. 1: https://oiir.illinois.edu/about/demographics https://oiir.illinois.edu/about/demographics
- gdix 10y ago
  That doesn't make the study any less flawed. I'm questioning whether we should even accept this study if there wasn't a big enough pool of black people to actually run the experiment properly. Isn't anyone at least a bit curious how an all black team would have performed? If the all black team performs as badly as the all white team, it would only bolster the argument that diversity is important. Which is a good result, because you've made a more convincing study. But what if the all black team performs the best? It would cause you to look at the study completely different, wouldn't it? Maybe for cultural reasons, black people are better at these kinds of puzzles. We'll never know because it seems like they have already decided this study in its current form is enough to conclude that "diversity=good".
  - gnicholas 10y ago
    I'm not saying that one can't imagine a better study. I'm saying that the notion that the researchers committed a "sin" and that it did "not even occur to the researchers" to use a different design is unsupported. The author has no idea what was or was not considered by the researchers, but she is happy to impugn their motives. Given the choice between (1) run the study they ran, and have a large enough sample to get a statistically significant result and (2) don't run a study at all, which would you have preferred? With a population that is 5% black, it is likely that this is the practical choice the researchers faced. Note that (1) doesn't mean we get all the answers to everything we might wonder about, but it would give an answer that could help direct future research. That in and of itself is a useful step to take, IMO.
tps5 10y ago
> One of my colleagues went on to ascribe the ‘horribleness’ of many computer systems in everyday use to the “brusque masculinism” of their creation. The idea that males must be more "brusque" than females is the same thing as saying that females are "attentive and caring" (in comparison to males). It's just an old stereotype. I didn't think this article said anything new, or well.
thomastjeffery 10y ago
It took me a minute to get the riddle (if you haven't tried, go read it now), but I don't believe that means I am biased. My first thought was that the "surgeon" was the son's father, and the "father" was just someone who had children. In a literal sense, that could be a valid answer, but the focus of the riddle is whether I considered the surgeon to be the son's mother. Does the fact that I consider a surgeon to be male when there is no gender specified mean that I am biased? Of course not! I would not bat an eye to learn that there are female surgeons. That is not where the ambiguity comes from. My assumption that a character is male derives from both the fact that I am male, and the fact that the majority of English writing, and indeed, English grammar assume male gender. When I read "To Kill a Mockingbird", I assumed the main character to be a boy until several pages in, where, to my surprise, the gender was specified to be a girl. Of course it was easier to read a first-person story from the standpoint of my own gender. Did I have a problem that the main character was female? No. That did not matter to me. Did I wish that gender was specified as soon as the character was introduced? Yes. That would have made the writing much easier to comprehend. TL;DR The fact that gender bias exists in language does not mean it exists in the mind of the reader. EDIT: To those that are downvoting, would you care to explain your complaint? Just because I disagree with OP's argument does not mean I am not open to discussion.
- lgas 10y ago
  I didn't downvote but two possible reasons would be: - IIRC the main character of To Kill a Mockingbird was Atticus Finch, who is male. - You make a lot of assertions ("Does [that] mean that I am biased? Of course not!") but don't actually provide any evidence of that, and in fact your post seems to contain some counter evidence. For example, asserting that you would "not bat an eye to learn that there are female surgeons" suggests that you currently believe there are no female surgeons so hearing otherwise would be news to you, which of course would be hugely biased.
  - thomastjeffery 10y ago
    > IIRC the main character of To Kill a Mockingbird was Atticus Finch, who is male. The story is told from the perspective of his daughter Jean Louise Finch, who ambiguously introduced herself by her nickname "scout". > would "not bat an eye to learn that there are female surgeons" I can see where I miswrote "learned". I meant that in the context of reading a story, as in reading that in some particular context (like this riddle) that a surgeon is female. > hearing otherwise would be news to you, which of course would be hugely biased. Of course that is not the case. I am well aware that there are totally competent female surgeons. That is what I mean by saying "I would not bat an eye". The context in which I would be surprised is the context of this riddle: Since I am male, and since English grammar has historically assumed a male descriptor, my first assumption in this riddle is that the surgeon is male. My point is that that assertion does not stem from the word surgeon, and the historically significant gender gap with surgeons. The assertion that the surgeon is male stems from the ambiguity of "surgeon". The riddle does not state, or even directly call into question the gender of the surgeon. In order to answer the riddle, the gender must be assumed to be either male or female. The answer to the riddle is the most likely conclusion, but because of the grammar used, it is not my first conclusion. My first conclusion (that "father" meant someone with children other than the "son"), was in fact not incorrect, but was indeed less likely.
08-15 10y ago
Here's an old riddle. Say "silk" five times in quick succession. Now spell "silk". What does the cow drink? A surprising majority of people says "milk", when the correct answer is "water". This is obviously because of some sort of bias against water. Any other explanation is absolutely inconceivable.
- krastanov 10y ago
  This is a very fair argument against the particular anecdote, and it should be raised. But a lot of quite rigorous research, with well developed experimental techniques guarding exactly against those problems, has shown that bias (especially implicit bias of which you are not aware) exists against females in both men and women. "Implicit Bias" and "Stereotype Threat" are googleable terms that lead to well sourced materials.
  - samatman 10y ago
    As is "Psychology Replication Crisis".
    - krastanov 10y ago
      Are you claiming that the research on Implicit bias or Stereotype threat is not reproducible (which is provably wrong, just by looking at google scholar search[1])? I would agree with you that the softer sciences historically have had problems with reproducibility and that there is a replication crisis, but I am talking about two specific, well studied (in multiple different settings) phenomena. I do not see how your comment contributes anything in this context. [1]: Admittedly it takes effort to sift through all the noise and find good meta studies. But everything takes effort.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    "bias exists against females in both men and women" Biases exist against everyone. I don't get your point, but the riddle was rather misused and had nothing to do with gender bias. It's not really a bias to have a gender associated with a word.
jbmorgado 10y ago
"When [Tracy] Chou discovered a significant flaw in [her] company’s code and pointed it out, her engineering team dismissed her concerns, saying that they had been using the code for long enough that any problems would have been discovered. Chou persisted, saying she could demonstrate the conditions under which the bug was triggered. Finally, a male co-worker saw that she was right and raised the alarm, whereupon people in the office began to listen. Chou told her team that she knew how to fix the flaw; skeptical, they told her to have two other engineers review the changes and sign off on them, an unusual precaution." This would happen to any junior dev. As the article doesn't actually tell if Tracy was a junior or senior dev, this doesn't demonstrate any kind of gender bias by itself.
- gdix 10y ago
  Or it's as simple as "1 person bringing up a subtle problem doesn't cause people to become alarmed in this particular situation, but if more people are saying it's a problem, then others become more convinced". It's possible that age/race/gender have absolutely nothing to do with it. But those with an ax to grind against "the patriarchy" will look at this situation only through that lens. You might say she's biased into assuming that everything that happens to her is because of sexism.
Mz 10y ago
"The sky is falling. The sky is falling." When are we ever going to hear about how to solve this instead of more investigating evidence into its existence? Oh, wait. We aren't. People don't actually want to talk about solutions.
- ahartman00 10y ago
  Not sure if you did this on purpose, but I really appreciated that you didnt mention the problem's name in your comment. You could copy paste this exact comment into any number of threads and be spot on. Climate change, political division, etc. Personally I think it is like any other bias, or maybe a combination. People are doing it subconsciously, which means it is going to be hard to get them to stop. Confirmation bias kicks in when we see a person of $group acting in a way that confirms our existing beliefs. Also when a person who feels that discrimination is rampant feels they have been discriminated against. Fundamental attribution error might explain why some people feel like they are the victims of intentional malice, rather than a mistake. Self serving bias might explain why members of $group are unwilling to admit that they discriminate against $group2. Or why we dont hear about how $group2 is a minority in other professions. Framing might explain why a story about one person, which might be missing details(such as seniority); is used to demonstrate the problem. Unfortunately this would mean the solution is for everyone to behave rationally...
  - Mz 10y ago
    No, not really doing that particular thing on purpose. Just trying to tread lightly because I seem to be the highest ranked woman on HN and (among other things) I blog about gender issues and how to address it more effectively. So, what I really want to bitch about is a lack of attention for my writing while people focus on this shit, as usual. But I also get tired of the fact that anything I say about gender issues tends to get vastly more attention than anything else I do on HN in a manner that simultaneously belittles me and pigeonholes me. Meanwhile, if I ask a question like this -- which is me, a woman, trying to develop a business idea and stop being a total fucking loser in life -- crickets chirp and no one replies at all because, no, no one wants to actually do anything constructive at all about such problems: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14000346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14000346 (Throws hands up in air. Grumpily stomps off.)
wink 10y ago
I really wonder how this result translates to non-native speakers, especially with native tongues that have gendered nouns (but then there's often the male form as the default). So am I more likely to assume the surgeon as male because there is no single word for "female surgeon" but in my native language it would be or doesn't that matter for the experiment?

32 points by wglb 10y ago

I believe gender bias is a huge issue, but I wonder if the riddle was worded differently if the responses would be different: >Here’s an old riddle. If you haven’t heard it, give yourself time to answer before reading past this paragraph: a father and daughter are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The daughter is rushed to the hospital; just as she’s about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, “I can’t operate—that girl is my daughter!” Explain… I'd also be curious to see what the results would be if it was a mother/daughter crash — I suspect that most people would say the father is the surgeon (rather than saying the girl has two moms), but I'd like to see at what rate. My answer in the original question was two dads, but I'm not entirely sure if I misinterpreted "he's about to go under the knife" originally, or if I'm biased (I also might want to think I misinterpreted it because I don't want to be biased). The article provides a lot of additional evidence of bias. I just found the first riddle interesting.

Cuuugi 10y ago
Maybe the car cash duo was a husband and wife (their relationship isn't explicitly specified) and the surgeon was her father.... You ageist.
abraves10001 10y ago
I thought the child was illegitimate or adopted and the doctor was the biological father. I am pretty sure I failed the bias test, regardless.
macintux 10y ago
My parents asked me that riddle after seeing it on (IIRC) "All in the Family" when I was ~10. I failed miserably, disappointing my mother.
- sushisource 10y ago
  The whole riddle is set up to be intentionally difficult. The way it primes you with "father" and "son" as parent comment mentions. I think there's some validity to it, but I think it's a clever linguistic trick more than anything.
  - whoyawn 10y ago
    I actually read the parent comment before going to the article and I still had a hard time figuring out the answer. It may be because I was primed with the fact it's a "riddle"; the entire time I was trying to come up with a clever answer rather than thinking the surgeon was the mother. Father+daughter vs father+son didn't have much of an effect, but bias was probably present, nevertheless.
metaphorm 10y ago
the basis of the riddle is the widely held assumption that the surgeon is is male, which is more or less justified based on demographics, even if it is a biased assumption. evidence: https://datausa.io/profile/soc/291060/#age_gender https://datausa.io/profile/soc/291060/#age_gender now, it's an interesting riddle because it exposes the way we often generalize from demographics even when there are reasonable contextual clues that our generalization isn't accurate. however, I don't go so far as to call this a prejudicial kind of bias. I don't really think that the tendency to generalize from observations is unreasonable or necessarily connected to prejudicial or exclusionary actions.
Infernal 10y ago
I read this comment before the article. I also assumed that the surgeon was male - my best guess at an answer to the riddle was in the wording: the people in the car crash were "a father and daughter" not "a father and his daughter", so my answer was that the man killed in the crash was "a father" and not "the girl's father", thereby allowing the possibility of the surgeon to be the girl's father.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

ar15saveslives 10y ago

> The importance of diversity is beyond reasonable doubt, isn’t it? Why?

gdix 10y ago
Translation: "if you don't agree with this, you are not being reasonable"
- ar15saveslives 10y ago
  Great argument, can be applied to anything.
  - gdix 10y ago
    Well yeah, anything that someone says is "beyond a reasonable doubt" when they're referring to something that as nuanced as "diversity".
7952 10y ago
It could give a greater range of insight and experience to a problem. Also, it is easy to optimise for diversity, and fiendishly difficult to optimise for other more subtle aspects of human behaviour.
- self-diversity 10y ago
  you've hypothesized reasons why something should be automatically accepted, which is funny in cosmic poetry sense, but not terribly evidentiary.
  - 7952 10y ago
    How can you provide evidence to support a philosophical viewpoint? Such questions are unavoidably subjective.
    - 10y ago

socialconstruct 10y ago

What is the likelihood that even a minute's consideration is given that this represents some sort of natural thought pattern that we can just learn to ignore, like other forms of tribalism? My guess would be no chance at all. There's a real dedication to the idea that this sort of thing is all socially constructed despite literal decades of no progress at all in any way you would expect if such an idea were true.

onuralp 10y ago

Here is the modern version of the riddle: if you are to analyze your e-mail responses (e.g., tone, wording), do you notice any gender bias? I was intrigued with the story[0] where the colleagues of opposite gender swapped their names when signing their client e-mails, and the responses they received were heavily gender biased. While this may be anecdotal, I would not be surprised if this is more prevalent than (hopefully) appreciated. [0] https://twitter.com/i/moments/839950218099576832 https://twitter.com/i/moments/839950218099576832

gdix 10y ago
I think the TLDR of the original article can be summed by "there is bias even in the interpretation of bias-measuring studies". The fact that people read this story and conclude "well the only variable at play here is gender, therefore: sexism". 1. This is anecdote. One event. 2. The story-teller is introducing his own bias. 3. The reader has certain preconceptions about gender and bias. While this is an interesting anecdote, a skeptic should take this whole situation with a grain of salt.
gnicholas 10y ago
Thanks for the link — very interesting. I had an opposite experience when my wife and I had some issues with the airbnb we were renting for several months. We used my wife's account since the trip was for her business travel. But I managed all the communication electronically, including when some issues arose. I was also the person who talked with the host in-person when she showed up to fix some of the issues (broken heating, no smoke detectors). As she was leaving, she said: "your wife is much more polite than you". I asked how she would know, and she referenced the online communication. She was surprised to learn that it was in fact me that she had been corresponding with. I do not minimize the impact of gender on workplace experience, which is certainly more important than my housing-related anecdote. But it would be interesting to see what the differences are in various types of interactions, and where different genders are treated better or worse.

gnicholas 10y ago

> But why only choose to study all-white groups and groups of two whites and one black? What about the other two possibilities: all black and two blacks and one white? Did this not even occur to the researchers? I could imagine that all-black do the best, or that two black and one white do the worst. Who knows. The sin here seems to be not even considering all the four combinations. The author fails to consider the possibility that there were not enough black students to do a study of this format. The university where the study was done is (currently) roughly 5% black and 44% white [1]. Given this breakdown, it is likely that the dearth of black students resulted in the study's design. 1: https://oiir.illinois.edu/about/demographics https://oiir.illinois.edu/about/demographics

gdix 10y ago
That doesn't make the study any less flawed. I'm questioning whether we should even accept this study if there wasn't a big enough pool of black people to actually run the experiment properly. Isn't anyone at least a bit curious how an all black team would have performed? If the all black team performs as badly as the all white team, it would only bolster the argument that diversity is important. Which is a good result, because you've made a more convincing study. But what if the all black team performs the best? It would cause you to look at the study completely different, wouldn't it? Maybe for cultural reasons, black people are better at these kinds of puzzles. We'll never know because it seems like they have already decided this study in its current form is enough to conclude that "diversity=good".
- gnicholas 10y ago
  I'm not saying that one can't imagine a better study. I'm saying that the notion that the researchers committed a "sin" and that it did "not even occur to the researchers" to use a different design is unsupported. The author has no idea what was or was not considered by the researchers, but she is happy to impugn their motives. Given the choice between (1) run the study they ran, and have a large enough sample to get a statistically significant result and (2) don't run a study at all, which would you have preferred? With a population that is 5% black, it is likely that this is the practical choice the researchers faced. Note that (1) doesn't mean we get all the answers to everything we might wonder about, but it would give an answer that could help direct future research. That in and of itself is a useful step to take, IMO.

tps5 10y ago

> One of my colleagues went on to ascribe the ‘horribleness’ of many computer systems in everyday use to the “brusque masculinism” of their creation. The idea that males must be more "brusque" than females is the same thing as saying that females are "attentive and caring" (in comparison to males). It's just an old stereotype. I didn't think this article said anything new, or well.

thomastjeffery 10y ago

It took me a minute to get the riddle (if you haven't tried, go read it now), but I don't believe that means I am biased. My first thought was that the "surgeon" was the son's father, and the "father" was just someone who had children. In a literal sense, that could be a valid answer, but the focus of the riddle is whether I considered the surgeon to be the son's mother. Does the fact that I consider a surgeon to be male when there is no gender specified mean that I am biased? Of course not! I would not bat an eye to learn that there are female surgeons. That is not where the ambiguity comes from. My assumption that a character is male derives from both the fact that I am male, and the fact that the majority of English writing, and indeed, English grammar assume male gender. When I read "To Kill a Mockingbird", I assumed the main character to be a boy until several pages in, where, to my surprise, the gender was specified to be a girl. Of course it was easier to read a first-person story from the standpoint of my own gender. Did I have a problem that the main character was female? No. That did not matter to me. Did I wish that gender was specified as soon as the character was introduced? Yes. That would have made the writing much easier to comprehend. TL;DR The fact that gender bias exists in language does not mean it exists in the mind of the reader. EDIT: To those that are downvoting, would you care to explain your complaint? Just because I disagree with OP's argument does not mean I am not open to discussion.

lgas 10y ago
I didn't downvote but two possible reasons would be: - IIRC the main character of To Kill a Mockingbird was Atticus Finch, who is male. - You make a lot of assertions ("Does [that] mean that I am biased? Of course not!") but don't actually provide any evidence of that, and in fact your post seems to contain some counter evidence. For example, asserting that you would "not bat an eye to learn that there are female surgeons" suggests that you currently believe there are no female surgeons so hearing otherwise would be news to you, which of course would be hugely biased.
- thomastjeffery 10y ago
  > IIRC the main character of To Kill a Mockingbird was Atticus Finch, who is male. The story is told from the perspective of his daughter Jean Louise Finch, who ambiguously introduced herself by her nickname "scout". > would "not bat an eye to learn that there are female surgeons" I can see where I miswrote "learned". I meant that in the context of reading a story, as in reading that in some particular context (like this riddle) that a surgeon is female. > hearing otherwise would be news to you, which of course would be hugely biased. Of course that is not the case. I am well aware that there are totally competent female surgeons. That is what I mean by saying "I would not bat an eye". The context in which I would be surprised is the context of this riddle: Since I am male, and since English grammar has historically assumed a male descriptor, my first assumption in this riddle is that the surgeon is male. My point is that that assertion does not stem from the word surgeon, and the historically significant gender gap with surgeons. The assertion that the surgeon is male stems from the ambiguity of "surgeon". The riddle does not state, or even directly call into question the gender of the surgeon. In order to answer the riddle, the gender must be assumed to be either male or female. The answer to the riddle is the most likely conclusion, but because of the grammar used, it is not my first conclusion. My first conclusion (that "father" meant someone with children other than the "son"), was in fact not incorrect, but was indeed less likely.

08-15 10y ago

Here's an old riddle. Say "silk" five times in quick succession. Now spell "silk". What does the cow drink? A surprising majority of people says "milk", when the correct answer is "water". This is obviously because of some sort of bias against water. Any other explanation is absolutely inconceivable.

krastanov 10y ago
This is a very fair argument against the particular anecdote, and it should be raised. But a lot of quite rigorous research, with well developed experimental techniques guarding exactly against those problems, has shown that bias (especially implicit bias of which you are not aware) exists against females in both men and women. "Implicit Bias" and "Stereotype Threat" are googleable terms that lead to well sourced materials.
- samatman 10y ago
  As is "Psychology Replication Crisis".
  - krastanov 10y ago
    Are you claiming that the research on Implicit bias or Stereotype threat is not reproducible (which is provably wrong, just by looking at google scholar search[1])? I would agree with you that the softer sciences historically have had problems with reproducibility and that there is a replication crisis, but I am talking about two specific, well studied (in multiple different settings) phenomena. I do not see how your comment contributes anything in this context. [1]: Admittedly it takes effort to sift through all the noise and find good meta studies. But everything takes effort.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  "bias exists against females in both men and women" Biases exist against everyone. I don't get your point, but the riddle was rather misused and had nothing to do with gender bias. It's not really a bias to have a gender associated with a word.

jbmorgado 10y ago

"When [Tracy] Chou discovered a significant flaw in [her] company’s code and pointed it out, her engineering team dismissed her concerns, saying that they had been using the code for long enough that any problems would have been discovered. Chou persisted, saying she could demonstrate the conditions under which the bug was triggered. Finally, a male co-worker saw that she was right and raised the alarm, whereupon people in the office began to listen. Chou told her team that she knew how to fix the flaw; skeptical, they told her to have two other engineers review the changes and sign off on them, an unusual precaution." This would happen to any junior dev. As the article doesn't actually tell if Tracy was a junior or senior dev, this doesn't demonstrate any kind of gender bias by itself.

gdix 10y ago
Or it's as simple as "1 person bringing up a subtle problem doesn't cause people to become alarmed in this particular situation, but if more people are saying it's a problem, then others become more convinced". It's possible that age/race/gender have absolutely nothing to do with it. But those with an ax to grind against "the patriarchy" will look at this situation only through that lens. You might say she's biased into assuming that everything that happens to her is because of sexism.

Mz 10y ago

"The sky is falling. The sky is falling." When are we ever going to hear about how to solve this instead of more investigating evidence into its existence? Oh, wait. We aren't. People don't actually want to talk about solutions.

ahartman00 10y ago
Not sure if you did this on purpose, but I really appreciated that you didnt mention the problem's name in your comment. You could copy paste this exact comment into any number of threads and be spot on. Climate change, political division, etc. Personally I think it is like any other bias, or maybe a combination. People are doing it subconsciously, which means it is going to be hard to get them to stop. Confirmation bias kicks in when we see a person of $group acting in a way that confirms our existing beliefs. Also when a person who feels that discrimination is rampant feels they have been discriminated against. Fundamental attribution error might explain why some people feel like they are the victims of intentional malice, rather than a mistake. Self serving bias might explain why members of $group are unwilling to admit that they discriminate against $group2. Or why we dont hear about how $group2 is a minority in other professions. Framing might explain why a story about one person, which might be missing details(such as seniority); is used to demonstrate the problem. Unfortunately this would mean the solution is for everyone to behave rationally...
- Mz 10y ago
  No, not really doing that particular thing on purpose. Just trying to tread lightly because I seem to be the highest ranked woman on HN and (among other things) I blog about gender issues and how to address it more effectively. So, what I really want to bitch about is a lack of attention for my writing while people focus on this shit, as usual. But I also get tired of the fact that anything I say about gender issues tends to get vastly more attention than anything else I do on HN in a manner that simultaneously belittles me and pigeonholes me. Meanwhile, if I ask a question like this -- which is me, a woman, trying to develop a business idea and stop being a total fucking loser in life -- crickets chirp and no one replies at all because, no, no one wants to actually do anything constructive at all about such problems: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14000346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14000346 (Throws hands up in air. Grumpily stomps off.)

wink 10y ago

I really wonder how this result translates to non-native speakers, especially with native tongues that have gendered nouns (but then there's often the male form as the default). So am I more likely to assume the surgeon as male because there is no single word for "female surgeon" but in my native language it would be or doesn't that matter for the experiment?