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So who’s to blame for more women dying in car crashes than men because there were no female crash test dummies? Don’t you think that having women on the develo

So who’s to blame for more women dying in car crashes than men because there were no female crash test dummies? Don’t you think that having women on the development teams might have helped catch the fact that voice recognition software didn’t recognize female voices before the software ever made it to QA, rather than after release?

bsaul 8y ago
About car crash dummies: i know nothing about that field, but i suppose crash test dummies are build to represent the "most average human being", gender neutral. The fact that women are a subcategory that require specially manufactured dummies is i think a scientific discovery. Not something the average person would have guessed... I suppose there are other subcategories ( obese peopl, old people, short people) that probably would benefit for custom made crash test.. On female voices not being recognized i'd like you to show me the article that tell this story, because it seems so obvious that i'm having a hard time believing it ( looks like something as obvious as understanding people speaking with different accents).
- cimmanom 8y ago
  But that just the thing. When only or mostly men are involved, “gender neutral” ends up being masculine (like the crash test dummies that had height and weight distributions like average men, not like average humans) because that’s our societal default. “Oh, women are a special subcategory.” No, we’re not. We’re half the fucking population.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - bsaul 8y ago
    Let's take the car dummy example. Do you think gender is one of the most relevant distinction if you'd really want to dig interesting clues from your team, that professionals wouldn't have thought of ? If i were a team leader honestly i wouldn't care about gender first. I'd be more interested in recruiting people from different weights, sizes, ages, maybe even races, and medical backgrounds first. And then, maybe gender would come into play. For some problems gender is an important factor, for others it's not. The fact that this "gender" predicate divides the world into two half doesn't make it relevant per say. I could divide between blue eyes and brown eyes, or skin tan, or lactose tolerant, etc, and come up with fairmy big chunks. Now I do agree that differences between men and women are indeed so important that it's an very interesting criteria in many topics. Although for some reason i don't think that's the argument you want to base your reasoning upon.
- shimms 8y ago
  Like this one: https://makingnoiseandhearingthings.com/2016/07/12/googles-speech-recognition-has-a-gender-bias/ https://makingnoiseandhearingthings.com/2016/07/12/googles-s... AI/ML inherits the bias from it's trainers - this is pretty well accepted.
ralusek 8y ago
Maybe there would have been more testing on female voices if there were more female engineers, but that is sort of ancillary solution to a problem of poor product design and testing. It also fails to address the underlying problem that there are simply nowhere near an equal number of available female engineers as male engineers. Shooting for a goal of 50:50 ratio when that is not anywhere close to the ratio of the available candidates makes it mathematically impossible to not make other sacrifices...for what objective? Your claim is that there are things that female engineers bring to the table that male engineers do not. My claim is that there is nothing a male engineer can do on the basis of their gender that a female cannot, and the inverse is equally true. In fact, I can't imagine a more offensive argument than saying "we need more female engineers so that our app is better at handling women's periods."
- cimmanom 8y ago
  Did I say 50-50. I’m saying we should care about having any. Maybe male engineers and product owners could pay attention to female voices and menstrual science. But they didn’t. It’s much less likely that a woman working on these products would miss those issues.
thaumasiotes 8y ago
How would female crash test dummies address the problem of women dying in car crashes more often than men? For any given car, women crashing in that car will die more often than men crashing in the same car, because women are much more fragile than men. Dummies will only let you measure the effect.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  It isn't really a case of "more fragile", but different body shapes, different center of gravity, and so on. Not to mention that if you are talking averages, the "average" test dummy could easily be built taller, with more muscle mass and a bit less regular fat (even at healthy weights) than the average woman is simply because men would tip the scale a bit upwards. I imagine these things cause differences in the way folks move in accidents. Airbags, for example: If breasts tend to get in the way, then the airbags aren't going to be as helpful for women or, alternatively, cause more harm to women simply because of breasts (I'm speculating the example, I don't know it to be true).
- shimms 8y ago
  Please cite evidence that women are inherently more fragile than men.

bsaul 8y ago

About car crash dummies: i know nothing about that field, but i suppose crash test dummies are build to represent the "most average human being", gender neutral. The fact that women are a subcategory that require specially manufactured dummies is i think a scientific discovery. Not something the average person would have guessed... I suppose there are other subcategories ( obese peopl, old people, short people) that probably would benefit for custom made crash test.. On female voices not being recognized i'd like you to show me the article that tell this story, because it seems so obvious that i'm having a hard time believing it ( looks like something as obvious as understanding people speaking with different accents).

cimmanom 8y ago
But that just the thing. When only or mostly men are involved, “gender neutral” ends up being masculine (like the crash test dummies that had height and weight distributions like average men, not like average humans) because that’s our societal default. “Oh, women are a special subcategory.” No, we’re not. We’re half the fucking population.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- bsaul 8y ago
  Let's take the car dummy example. Do you think gender is one of the most relevant distinction if you'd really want to dig interesting clues from your team, that professionals wouldn't have thought of ? If i were a team leader honestly i wouldn't care about gender first. I'd be more interested in recruiting people from different weights, sizes, ages, maybe even races, and medical backgrounds first. And then, maybe gender would come into play. For some problems gender is an important factor, for others it's not. The fact that this "gender" predicate divides the world into two half doesn't make it relevant per say. I could divide between blue eyes and brown eyes, or skin tan, or lactose tolerant, etc, and come up with fairmy big chunks. Now I do agree that differences between men and women are indeed so important that it's an very interesting criteria in many topics. Although for some reason i don't think that's the argument you want to base your reasoning upon.
shimms 8y ago
Like this one: https://makingnoiseandhearingthings.com/2016/07/12/googles-speech-recognition-has-a-gender-bias/ https://makingnoiseandhearingthings.com/2016/07/12/googles-s... AI/ML inherits the bias from it's trainers - this is pretty well accepted.

ralusek 8y ago

Maybe there would have been more testing on female voices if there were more female engineers, but that is sort of ancillary solution to a problem of poor product design and testing. It also fails to address the underlying problem that there are simply nowhere near an equal number of available female engineers as male engineers. Shooting for a goal of 50:50 ratio when that is not anywhere close to the ratio of the available candidates makes it mathematically impossible to not make other sacrifices...for what objective? Your claim is that there are things that female engineers bring to the table that male engineers do not. My claim is that there is nothing a male engineer can do on the basis of their gender that a female cannot, and the inverse is equally true. In fact, I can't imagine a more offensive argument than saying "we need more female engineers so that our app is better at handling women's periods."

cimmanom 8y ago
Did I say 50-50. I’m saying we should care about having any. Maybe male engineers and product owners could pay attention to female voices and menstrual science. But they didn’t. It’s much less likely that a woman working on these products would miss those issues.

thaumasiotes 8y ago

How would female crash test dummies address the problem of women dying in car crashes more often than men? For any given car, women crashing in that car will die more often than men crashing in the same car, because women are much more fragile than men. Dummies will only let you measure the effect.

Broken_Hippo 8y ago
It isn't really a case of "more fragile", but different body shapes, different center of gravity, and so on. Not to mention that if you are talking averages, the "average" test dummy could easily be built taller, with more muscle mass and a bit less regular fat (even at healthy weights) than the average woman is simply because men would tip the scale a bit upwards. I imagine these things cause differences in the way folks move in accidents. Airbags, for example: If breasts tend to get in the way, then the airbags aren't going to be as helpful for women or, alternatively, cause more harm to women simply because of breasts (I'm speculating the example, I don't know it to be true).
shimms 8y ago
Please cite evidence that women are inherently more fragile than men.