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>Ok. I think it's also quite likely that they're not. And this study and other similar ones would seem to prove you wrong? >You'd think that the idea that gay

>Ok. I think it's also quite likely that they're not. And this study and other similar ones would seem to prove you wrong? >You'd think that the idea that gay men are sexually attracted to men because they are more feminine than other men would have died in the face of all the obvious counterexamples A few exceptions don't disprove a statistical correlation. Besides it's more complicated than just "gay people are more feminine". There are various hormones and biological interactions other than just testosterone. And the effects happen early on in development; Whether an adult has lots of testosterone and muscles is irrelevant. As this study shows, humans are much worse than this algorithm at identifying gay people. It's not merely a matter of "that face looks feminine" or human scorers would have done much better. Presumably many of the correlations are very small or subtle, but in aggregate they can get surprising accuracy.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
>> And this study and other similar ones would seem to prove you wrong? A team reported their results with a model they trained. The results are accompanied by some hopeful theory about things that the authors have no way to know. There's no proof of anything in there.
foldr 9y ago
It's not a few exceptions, it's large number. You keep talking as if almost all gay men were unusually feminine, but that's really not the case. A large number of exceptions to a generalization absolutely is sufficient to undermine a causal hypothesis. If X causes Y, then then you shouldn't frequently find Y in the absence of X. You do frequently find gayness in the absence of above average femininity. >Besides it's more complicated than just "gay people are more feminine". Of course it is more complicated that that. That's what I've been saying. But in the media, and on HN, the idea of relating homosexuality directly to a masculine-feminine continuum is very popular. Many do not realize that this is not science, but just old-school homophobia dressed in pseudoscientific garb.
- yorwba 9y ago
  > A large number of exceptions to a generalization absolutely is sufficient to undermine a causal hypothesis. Only if it's a deterministic causal hypothesis. Otherwise, the proportion of counterexamples only serves to bound the effect size, which is obviously quite small in this case. I don't think anyone in this thread seriously believes that "almost all gay men [are] unusually feminine". If they were, they wouldn't be called "gay men" but "women with a penis" or something like that. > That's what I've been saying. But in the media, and on HN, the idea of relating homosexuality directly to a masculine-feminine continuum is very popular. Many do not realize that this is not science, but just old-school homophobia dressed in pseudoscientific garb. A direct relation would certainly be surprising, but that doesn't mean you can't study correlations between sexual orientation and certain measurements of the body. That's science and might lead to insights how and when sexual orientation develops. I don't really care what people make of it who confuse correlation for causation or don't understand that statistical significance doesn't imply a large effect size.
  - foldr 9y ago
    >If they were, they wouldn't be called "gay men" but "women with a penis" or something like that. What a bizarre thing to say. People used to really think that all gay men were unusually feminine, but they still didn't call them women with penises, because they aren't. >Otherwise, the proportion of counterexamples only serves to bound the effect size, which is obviously quite small in this case. But why the interest in an effect which is small if it exists at all, and for which there is little evidence? There are probably hundreds of other features which correlate equally strongly (i.e., not very strongly at all) with homosexuality. This one happens to tap into pre-existing stereotypes. >A direct relation would certainly be surprising, but that doesn't mean you can't study correlations between sexual orientation and certain measurements of the body. That's science and might lead to insights how and when sexual orientation develops. The topic of the article isn't a scientific study. It's a couple of people in a business school playing around with deep learning for marketing purposes. They are not doing it because they're genuinely interested in uncovering the mechanisms underlying the development of human sexuality. >I don't really care what people make of it who confuse correlation for causation or don't understand that statistical significance doesn't imply a large effect size. In other words, you don't care what the majority of the population make of this research. That's fine for you if you're not gay and you're not affected by it. But the question of how this research is marketed, and how it's perceived by the general public, is potentially very important to gay people. It matters to us what the general public thinks about us.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

>> And this study and other similar ones would seem to prove you wrong? A team reported their results with a model they trained. The results are accompanied by some hopeful theory about things that the authors have no way to know. There's no proof of anything in there.

foldr 9y ago

It's not a few exceptions, it's large number. You keep talking as if almost all gay men were unusually feminine, but that's really not the case. A large number of exceptions to a generalization absolutely is sufficient to undermine a causal hypothesis. If X causes Y, then then you shouldn't frequently find Y in the absence of X. You do frequently find gayness in the absence of above average femininity. >Besides it's more complicated than just "gay people are more feminine". Of course it is more complicated that that. That's what I've been saying. But in the media, and on HN, the idea of relating homosexuality directly to a masculine-feminine continuum is very popular. Many do not realize that this is not science, but just old-school homophobia dressed in pseudoscientific garb.

yorwba 9y ago
> A large number of exceptions to a generalization absolutely is sufficient to undermine a causal hypothesis. Only if it's a deterministic causal hypothesis. Otherwise, the proportion of counterexamples only serves to bound the effect size, which is obviously quite small in this case. I don't think anyone in this thread seriously believes that "almost all gay men [are] unusually feminine". If they were, they wouldn't be called "gay men" but "women with a penis" or something like that. > That's what I've been saying. But in the media, and on HN, the idea of relating homosexuality directly to a masculine-feminine continuum is very popular. Many do not realize that this is not science, but just old-school homophobia dressed in pseudoscientific garb. A direct relation would certainly be surprising, but that doesn't mean you can't study correlations between sexual orientation and certain measurements of the body. That's science and might lead to insights how and when sexual orientation develops. I don't really care what people make of it who confuse correlation for causation or don't understand that statistical significance doesn't imply a large effect size.
- foldr 9y ago
  >If they were, they wouldn't be called "gay men" but "women with a penis" or something like that. What a bizarre thing to say. People used to really think that all gay men were unusually feminine, but they still didn't call them women with penises, because they aren't. >Otherwise, the proportion of counterexamples only serves to bound the effect size, which is obviously quite small in this case. But why the interest in an effect which is small if it exists at all, and for which there is little evidence? There are probably hundreds of other features which correlate equally strongly (i.e., not very strongly at all) with homosexuality. This one happens to tap into pre-existing stereotypes. >A direct relation would certainly be surprising, but that doesn't mean you can't study correlations between sexual orientation and certain measurements of the body. That's science and might lead to insights how and when sexual orientation develops. The topic of the article isn't a scientific study. It's a couple of people in a business school playing around with deep learning for marketing purposes. They are not doing it because they're genuinely interested in uncovering the mechanisms underlying the development of human sexuality. >I don't really care what people make of it who confuse correlation for causation or don't understand that statistical significance doesn't imply a large effect size. In other words, you don't care what the majority of the population make of this research. That's fine for you if you're not gay and you're not affected by it. But the question of how this research is marketed, and how it's perceived by the general public, is potentially very important to gay people. It matters to us what the general public thinks about us.