9 ms·

I don't understand why people care so much whether preferences are biological or cultural. (Well, I understand it if we assume they are being dishonest, so assu

by js8 8y ago

I don't understand why people care so much whether preferences are biological or cultural. (Well, I understand it if we assume they are being dishonest, so assuming that something is not biological allows them to claim that it can be changed to whatever they think is morally superior. The debate whether being gay is cultural is a good example.) If I am given a true freedom to choose, to decide according to my preferences, what does it matter what is the reason for these preferences? What does it matter, how did I acquire my tastes? They are MY tastes.

Jweb_Guru 8y ago
Because in one case, things "must" be this way and there is no reason for introspection--given exactly equal opportunities, both groups would choose the same thing they are already choosing. In the other, that's not the case at all, and it may be necessary to (for example) pass legal reforms in an effort to make sure that both groups actually are free to choose.
- js8 8y ago
  I am not really sure what you're trying to say. Can you give an example, perhaps? In particular, can you give an illustrative example which explains the difference between "free to choose" and "actually free to choose"?
  - Joe-Z 8y ago
    I have an anecdote which I found quite interesting: Last week I got to meet my cousin’s daughter for the first time. It was a family dinner and after everyone had eaten she pulled out her barbie dolls to play with. Since I‘ve been on HN for a few years now and this is not the first time I came across this topic I asked my cousin: Why does your daughter play with barbies? Did she choose the barbie doll or where they given to her? My cousin, confused at first (because remember people: Most people don‘t really care that much about this stuff), answered: I think she chose herself, or maybe grandma gave one to her first. So this could be it: The little girl might be free to choose as far as her mom is concerned, but is she _actually_ free to choose because she got influenced by her grandma first? Who‘s to say?
    - js8 8y ago
      I think you're underestimating ability of children to make their preferences known. If she really had a different preference, she would either complain that she wants something else, not play with the doll and play with something else instead, or make most of the circumstance and play with it in a different way. I think what is important here is to give children different options. I personally got a lot of toys from my family that I didn't use that much as a kid, most notably sports equipment. Meccano and (later, as it was expensive) Lego on the other hand.. Not to mention computers, that was love on the first sight.
    - jasode 8y ago
      >, but is she _actually_ free to choose because she got influenced by her grandma first? Who‘s to say? To add to your rhetorical question of the inability to trace the source of gender preferences, some research on non-human primates was done.[1] In 2002, a study of vervet monkeys in the UK found male/female preferences for boy/girl toys.[2] That behavior was independently replicated in 2008 with rhesus monkeys in the USA displaying the same gender preferences.[3] There were also other studies of human infants[4] displaying gender preferences, and studies showing similar preferences across different cultures and countries.[5] Those results will probably not change minds on either side because -- the belief that it's mostly nature or belief that it's mostly nurture -- is too ingrained for any evidence to modify. If one leans towards innate differences, the studies confirm the beliefs. If one leans toward cultural influences, then the studies are rejected with "monkeys are not humans!" or "who's to say the lab monkeys didn't learn boy/girl toy preferences from the researchers?" The meta question then becomes: is it even possible to construct a nature/nurture science experiment that can actually convince one side or the other? (The answer seems to be "no" based on several hundred years of debate on "nature vs nurture" with no final resolution.) [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200804/why-do-boys-and-girls-prefer-different-toys https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-scientific-funda... [2] 2002 paper: https://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(02)00107-1/abstract https://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(02)00107-1/abst... [3] 2008 paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ [4] https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/06/03/infants-show-a-preference-for-toys-that-match-their-gender-before-they-know-what-gender-is/ https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/06/03/infants-show-a-preferen... [5] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/icd.2064 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/icd.2064
  - Jweb_Guru 8y ago
    Do you think there is something innate that changed genetically about women that led to them being much less likely to be computer programmers now than they were in the 1970s, but much more likely to be biologists? If not, there is probably some other factor at work leading to these changing "preferences," even though as far as I know women have had no legal barriers to working in either field throughout that period. Or, to bring up a very timely example: currently there are no legal barriers to coming out as transgender (in the U.S., anyway). I still think it's reasonable to say that people are not "free to choose" to transition, because in many cases they will be ostracized or (legally) discriminated against for it. This is similar to the status of homosexuality (though it is a less direct analogy since there were many more laws explicitly prohibiting homosexuality).
    - wongarsu 8y ago
      I think the programmer example is a much better example than the transgender example. If you are ostacized and disciminated for your choice, you are not "free to choose". It's "free to choose" in the same sense that everyone is "free to choose" to commit crime, with the risk of being put into prison for your choice. The "woman in programming" example is much better. Woman in programming started declining basically the moment computer games entered the market, since computer games are marketed primarily to males (outside of mobile, but that influence is fairly new). If we just simplify the whole problem to this one influence, woman are not programmers because of the marketing of "children toys". Is that bad, something we have to change? Nobody is really prevented from choosing to do certain freetime activities, to get exerience and motivation. They are just notpushed towards it. Still it leads to an unequal outcome.
      - Jweb_Guru 8y ago
        Firstly, I think you are implicitly assuming that there's nothing dissuading women from being programmers--that if they join the industry, things go perfectly smoothly for them. That's far from the case, in my experience. Secondly, nowadays, men and women both play games at roughly the same rate (with women playing a little more by some metrics), but that doesn't seem to have improved the chances of women entering the programming industry. What is the explanation for that (besides that it's "new", which isn't really the case anymore)? Like many people, I got into programming as a result of video games--but I find it hard to believe that that alone is responsible for the entirety of the observed difference in behavior. Finally, what is your explanation for the huge increase in the proportion of women in biology?
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
I think the idea is that your culture can enslave you in an idea of who you want to be, which isn't really yours, but rather your culture's. The idea seems to be that this identity has been forced on you, and isn't really yours. This brings up all kinds of nature-vs-nurture questions. It also has a nice recursive issue: Those who hold this view (that you should be free to choose your identity, without your culture imprinting one on you): Did their culture imprint that view on them? (Before you say "no", remember that "their culture" may be the university rather than the town they grew up in.)
- ido 8y ago
  yeah, for example 100+ years ago (or today in conservative environment) there were/are probably a lot of gay people who genuinely believe they are not and suffer their whole live, not even cause they are afraid to "come out" but cause they don't even accept themselves.
  - js8 8y ago
    If you suffer, and think that under different circumstances you could make different choices, with which you would be more comfortable, then you don't really have the free choice. But that's not what I am talking about. I am talking about society where people do have the free choice, and they are happy with it (or at least in correct proportions). Then these are their genuine preferences, and it shouldn't matter whether they come from the culture or biology.
    - ido 8y ago
      I understand you and agree to a point. But people are not such simple machines. Having a society with toxic (to our perspective) mores can have really subtle and strange (but still negative) effects. A gay man in Saudi Arabia who is deeply religious and conform to fundamentalist Islam cultural mores can genuinely believe he is not gay and that god is testing him, or that he is not attracted to his wife, or just not that sexual, while being unhappy and not thinking "if only I could I would have lived as a gay man!". Culture goes really deep.
- 8y ago
didibus 8y ago
For you, they now are your tastes, but if those tastes were acquired by nurture, they don't have to be your children's tastes. Given some tastes lead to less power and riches in our current societal environment. If they are nurtured, it is logical for parents to want to nurture them to more lucrative alternatives. If they are innate though, it's a waste of time to try and change them. So I feel it is definitly somewhat relevant to know.
- js8 8y ago
  That's a fair argument. As long as it's you who is interested in your preferences, and not preferences of others, then it's a valid question. My personal suggestion is to assume that biology plays no role and attempt to change yourself to whatever you feel you want to be. I don't think there is any downside really, because it's ultimately the journey not the goal that counts.
Broken_Hippo 8y ago
It honestly changes the way we work with something. Biological differences aren't things we can easily change right now. Skin color or the shape of one's fingernails or the length of one's legs. Some biological things have real world things that go with it. Skin color, for example, could put you at greater risk of skin cancer or a greater risk of low vitamin D. One simply accepts and lives with these things and works with them. If they are cultural or from nurture, it means that as a society, we can change things. It isn't that your tastes are an issue (mostly), but that society notices that, perhaps, men don't spend as much time with children or that women are doing things differently. In these cases, we can do things like start treating boys and girls more similarly. We can teach them similar things in school. In short, we can change how we nurture and change society (albeit slowly in some cases).
- js8 8y ago
  I understand, of course, that it makes the difference when you want to change things. But my main question is, why do you want to change things, even in case where everybody is free to choose? I am not really sure I buy into "treating boys and girls the same" either. I think what's more important is to give them options (perhaps against their will, to get them outside the comfort zone). It seems to me that schools already largely do treat everybody the same, even to the point where it is being truly annoying to open-minded individuals. I am not sure it's ideal to treat all kids the same, but rather recognize their individual differences. For example, my parents sent me to summer camps to learn some outdoor skills. I wasn't very good at it and I didn't enjoyed it as much as I probably should as a stereotypical male. But on the other hand, I think it was right thing to do. So, if despite these attempts to make me into an expert in wilderness survival, I didn't become one, and rather became computer geek, which was certainly out of fashion at the time, I have serious doubts about the theories that cultural ideas are so influential to the actual behavior of children.
  - ramblerman 8y ago
    > I think what's more important is to give them options (perhaps against their will, to get them outside the comfort zone) How do you justify the against their will part with your earlier sentiment that you don't understand why people care if its biology or cultural. If its biological, forcing them outside of their biological comfort zone seems particularly cruel.
defertoreptar 8y ago
It matters when you want to evaluate whether a group has gotten a bad deal in society. For example, if girls tend to prefer playing with dolls instead of toy cars, is it nature or nurture? If nature, then maybe there's a biological basis for why less women go into stem. If nurture, then maybe it's society's norms and expectations that explains why women more often go into people-oriented jobs like teaching and nursing. When you look at it this way, you can see why the difference has political implications.
- js8 8y ago
  "It matters when you want to evaluate whether a group has gotten a bad deal in society." I am not sure why would I want to do that. As a leftist (being pro-equality), I don't really want there to be anybody who got a bad deal in society. But why should it matter which group are they part of? It seems chauvinistic to me.
  - oarsinsync 8y ago
    > "It matters when you want to evaluate whether a group has gotten a bad deal in society." > I am not sure why would I want to do that. > As a leftist (being pro-equality), I don't really want there to be anybody who got a bad deal in society. I think the issue is that there are very large numbers of people who have gotten a bad deal in society. Investigating every individual, individually, is probably time and cost prohibitive. So investigating by common features across groups of individuals helps to try to maximise that return. While I think we'd all like to live in that utopia where nobody gets a bad deal in society, it's not the world we inhabit today, not even close.
    - js8 8y ago
      I disagree. We should look at people who got the bad deal directly (for example, are poor), not put them into some group. The latter is indirect and just more misleading. It is buying into a chauvinist narrative and strengthening it. "I think we'd all like to live in that utopia where nobody gets a bad deal in society" This is objectively not true. Many people don't care about other people getting bad deal.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
I don't understand why people care so much whether preferences are biological or cultural. Basically because if it is cultural, it may be a form of brainwashing and the expressed preference may actually be something they loathe, but don't feel empowered to reject. Whether or not you think this matters for purposes of making policy, it matters a whole lot for purposes of an individual figuring out how to create a good life for themselves.
- js8 8y ago
  "the expressed preference may actually be something they loathe, but don't feel empowered to reject" But we can ask them, right? We can ask e.g. nurses and computer programmers whether or not they loathe the choice of their profession. If there is e.g. relatively more computer programmers loathing it than nurses then you have an evidence of culturally pushed preference (towards computer programming, in this case), regardless what the gender ratio in those fields is. "it matters a whole lot for purposes of an individual figuring out how to create a good life for themselves" I already responded to that, basically I don't think it matters for an individual: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381148
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    "Learned helplessness" is a thing. If people have been told their entire lives from birth that X is strictly Verboten and they can only answer Y to that question, they may literally be unable to tell you that. They may not really understand it themselves. It may be literally unspeakable and even unthinkable.
    - js8 8y ago
      It might well be a thing but I am not sure if I can truly (or should) help somebody who explicitly says that there is no problem and they don't need help. Assuming they are deemed to be legally competent.
      - 8y ago
ramblerman 8y ago
Because if it is purely cultural then aiming for 50/50 gender parity across all industries is a reasonable goal. If it is not, it is a 'terrible', 'terrible' idea to approach gender equality from that angle.
- apatters 8y ago
  Why would 50/50 gender parity across all industries ever be a desirable goal? Coal mining is male dominated -- should we push more women into becoming coal miners?
  - alliecat 8y ago
    Coal mining is a historic industry; we should not be pushing anybody into coal mining (Looking at you, Australia) I’m assuming you picked coal mining because it’s an example of a dirty, dangerous position in an industry that’s rightfully stigmatised by most modern countries. If you’re suggesting that we shouldn’t push women into dangerous jobs but it’s okay to push men into them, then I would counter that we should make dangerous jobs safer for everybody and no, there’s no fundamental reason that women should not have the opportunity to work in these industries.
    - apatters 8y ago
      > If you’re suggesting that we shouldn’t push women into dangerous jobs but it’s okay to push men into them No I didn't suggest this. My question was not about energy policies. Let's substitute coal miners for waste collectors (colloquially referred to as garbage men, because 99% of them are male), and ask the question again. Garbage collection is male dominated -- should we push more women into becoming garbage collectors?
      - izzydata 8y ago
        We shouldn't push anyone into anything. Why is it ok for a man to be a garbage collector and not a woman? That sounds like gender inequality to me. You can't have it both ways.
0x445442 8y ago
> I don't understand why people care so much whether preferences are biological or cultural. Because the individual can't claim oppression as the cause for something like average pay differences when the individual chooses to go into a field that pays less on average.
perpetualcrayon 8y ago
From a personal / everyday perspective it's probably not that interesting. But uncovering the inherent nature of something, regardless of what it is, is always going to be interesting to large numbers of people.
dwild 8y ago
We have control over cultural things and if theses things bring a life that we can define as inferior, then I believe we should change that culture. The culture make women an object of desire, which increase sexual misconduct toward them. We can change that culture, shouldn't we? Look at women in the middle east, that's purely cultural. Is it alright? Culture bring racism, is it alright? >what does it matter what is the reason for these preferences? The same way we can fix a bug in a software, we can fix our culture to remove theses faults. Equal opportunities means that there's no fault. We are equals, thus there's no reason for culture to make us different. It's alright for a men to want to raise his family, he shouldn't have to bear the weight of the culture that tell him that it's his wife job to do it.

by js8 8y ago

Jweb_Guru 8y ago

Because in one case, things "must" be this way and there is no reason for introspection--given exactly equal opportunities, both groups would choose the same thing they are already choosing. In the other, that's not the case at all, and it may be necessary to (for example) pass legal reforms in an effort to make sure that both groups actually are free to choose.

js8 8y ago
I am not really sure what you're trying to say. Can you give an example, perhaps? In particular, can you give an illustrative example which explains the difference between "free to choose" and "actually free to choose"?
- Joe-Z 8y ago
  I have an anecdote which I found quite interesting: Last week I got to meet my cousin’s daughter for the first time. It was a family dinner and after everyone had eaten she pulled out her barbie dolls to play with. Since I‘ve been on HN for a few years now and this is not the first time I came across this topic I asked my cousin: Why does your daughter play with barbies? Did she choose the barbie doll or where they given to her? My cousin, confused at first (because remember people: Most people don‘t really care that much about this stuff), answered: I think she chose herself, or maybe grandma gave one to her first. So this could be it: The little girl might be free to choose as far as her mom is concerned, but is she _actually_ free to choose because she got influenced by her grandma first? Who‘s to say?
  - js8 8y ago
    I think you're underestimating ability of children to make their preferences known. If she really had a different preference, she would either complain that she wants something else, not play with the doll and play with something else instead, or make most of the circumstance and play with it in a different way. I think what is important here is to give children different options. I personally got a lot of toys from my family that I didn't use that much as a kid, most notably sports equipment. Meccano and (later, as it was expensive) Lego on the other hand.. Not to mention computers, that was love on the first sight.
  - jasode 8y ago
    >, but is she _actually_ free to choose because she got influenced by her grandma first? Who‘s to say? To add to your rhetorical question of the inability to trace the source of gender preferences, some research on non-human primates was done.[1] In 2002, a study of vervet monkeys in the UK found male/female preferences for boy/girl toys.[2] That behavior was independently replicated in 2008 with rhesus monkeys in the USA displaying the same gender preferences.[3] There were also other studies of human infants[4] displaying gender preferences, and studies showing similar preferences across different cultures and countries.[5] Those results will probably not change minds on either side because -- the belief that it's mostly nature or belief that it's mostly nurture -- is too ingrained for any evidence to modify. If one leans towards innate differences, the studies confirm the beliefs. If one leans toward cultural influences, then the studies are rejected with "monkeys are not humans!" or "who's to say the lab monkeys didn't learn boy/girl toy preferences from the researchers?" The meta question then becomes: is it even possible to construct a nature/nurture science experiment that can actually convince one side or the other? (The answer seems to be "no" based on several hundred years of debate on "nature vs nurture" with no final resolution.) [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200804/why-do-boys-and-girls-prefer-different-toys https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-scientific-funda... [2] 2002 paper: https://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(02)00107-1/abstract https://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(02)00107-1/abst... [3] 2008 paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ [4] https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/06/03/infants-show-a-preference-for-toys-that-match-their-gender-before-they-know-what-gender-is/ https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/06/03/infants-show-a-preferen... [5] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/icd.2064 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/icd.2064
- Jweb_Guru 8y ago
  Do you think there is something innate that changed genetically about women that led to them being much less likely to be computer programmers now than they were in the 1970s, but much more likely to be biologists? If not, there is probably some other factor at work leading to these changing "preferences," even though as far as I know women have had no legal barriers to working in either field throughout that period. Or, to bring up a very timely example: currently there are no legal barriers to coming out as transgender (in the U.S., anyway). I still think it's reasonable to say that people are not "free to choose" to transition, because in many cases they will be ostracized or (legally) discriminated against for it. This is similar to the status of homosexuality (though it is a less direct analogy since there were many more laws explicitly prohibiting homosexuality).
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    I think the programmer example is a much better example than the transgender example. If you are ostacized and disciminated for your choice, you are not "free to choose". It's "free to choose" in the same sense that everyone is "free to choose" to commit crime, with the risk of being put into prison for your choice. The "woman in programming" example is much better. Woman in programming started declining basically the moment computer games entered the market, since computer games are marketed primarily to males (outside of mobile, but that influence is fairly new). If we just simplify the whole problem to this one influence, woman are not programmers because of the marketing of "children toys". Is that bad, something we have to change? Nobody is really prevented from choosing to do certain freetime activities, to get exerience and motivation. They are just notpushed towards it. Still it leads to an unequal outcome.
    - Jweb_Guru 8y ago
      Firstly, I think you are implicitly assuming that there's nothing dissuading women from being programmers--that if they join the industry, things go perfectly smoothly for them. That's far from the case, in my experience. Secondly, nowadays, men and women both play games at roughly the same rate (with women playing a little more by some metrics), but that doesn't seem to have improved the chances of women entering the programming industry. What is the explanation for that (besides that it's "new", which isn't really the case anymore)? Like many people, I got into programming as a result of video games--but I find it hard to believe that that alone is responsible for the entirety of the observed difference in behavior. Finally, what is your explanation for the huge increase in the proportion of women in biology?

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

I think the idea is that your culture can enslave you in an idea of who you want to be, which isn't really yours, but rather your culture's. The idea seems to be that this identity has been forced on you, and isn't really yours. This brings up all kinds of nature-vs-nurture questions. It also has a nice recursive issue: Those who hold this view (that you should be free to choose your identity, without your culture imprinting one on you): Did their culture imprint that view on them? (Before you say "no", remember that "their culture" may be the university rather than the town they grew up in.)

ido 8y ago
yeah, for example 100+ years ago (or today in conservative environment) there were/are probably a lot of gay people who genuinely believe they are not and suffer their whole live, not even cause they are afraid to "come out" but cause they don't even accept themselves.
- js8 8y ago
  If you suffer, and think that under different circumstances you could make different choices, with which you would be more comfortable, then you don't really have the free choice. But that's not what I am talking about. I am talking about society where people do have the free choice, and they are happy with it (or at least in correct proportions). Then these are their genuine preferences, and it shouldn't matter whether they come from the culture or biology.
  - ido 8y ago
    I understand you and agree to a point. But people are not such simple machines. Having a society with toxic (to our perspective) mores can have really subtle and strange (but still negative) effects. A gay man in Saudi Arabia who is deeply religious and conform to fundamentalist Islam cultural mores can genuinely believe he is not gay and that god is testing him, or that he is not attracted to his wife, or just not that sexual, while being unhappy and not thinking "if only I could I would have lived as a gay man!". Culture goes really deep.
8y ago

didibus 8y ago

For you, they now are your tastes, but if those tastes were acquired by nurture, they don't have to be your children's tastes. Given some tastes lead to less power and riches in our current societal environment. If they are nurtured, it is logical for parents to want to nurture them to more lucrative alternatives. If they are innate though, it's a waste of time to try and change them. So I feel it is definitly somewhat relevant to know.

js8 8y ago
That's a fair argument. As long as it's you who is interested in your preferences, and not preferences of others, then it's a valid question. My personal suggestion is to assume that biology plays no role and attempt to change yourself to whatever you feel you want to be. I don't think there is any downside really, because it's ultimately the journey not the goal that counts.

Broken_Hippo 8y ago

It honestly changes the way we work with something. Biological differences aren't things we can easily change right now. Skin color or the shape of one's fingernails or the length of one's legs. Some biological things have real world things that go with it. Skin color, for example, could put you at greater risk of skin cancer or a greater risk of low vitamin D. One simply accepts and lives with these things and works with them. If they are cultural or from nurture, it means that as a society, we can change things. It isn't that your tastes are an issue (mostly), but that society notices that, perhaps, men don't spend as much time with children or that women are doing things differently. In these cases, we can do things like start treating boys and girls more similarly. We can teach them similar things in school. In short, we can change how we nurture and change society (albeit slowly in some cases).

js8 8y ago
I understand, of course, that it makes the difference when you want to change things. But my main question is, why do you want to change things, even in case where everybody is free to choose? I am not really sure I buy into "treating boys and girls the same" either. I think what's more important is to give them options (perhaps against their will, to get them outside the comfort zone). It seems to me that schools already largely do treat everybody the same, even to the point where it is being truly annoying to open-minded individuals. I am not sure it's ideal to treat all kids the same, but rather recognize their individual differences. For example, my parents sent me to summer camps to learn some outdoor skills. I wasn't very good at it and I didn't enjoyed it as much as I probably should as a stereotypical male. But on the other hand, I think it was right thing to do. So, if despite these attempts to make me into an expert in wilderness survival, I didn't become one, and rather became computer geek, which was certainly out of fashion at the time, I have serious doubts about the theories that cultural ideas are so influential to the actual behavior of children.
- ramblerman 8y ago
  > I think what's more important is to give them options (perhaps against their will, to get them outside the comfort zone) How do you justify the against their will part with your earlier sentiment that you don't understand why people care if its biology or cultural. If its biological, forcing them outside of their biological comfort zone seems particularly cruel.

defertoreptar 8y ago

It matters when you want to evaluate whether a group has gotten a bad deal in society. For example, if girls tend to prefer playing with dolls instead of toy cars, is it nature or nurture? If nature, then maybe there's a biological basis for why less women go into stem. If nurture, then maybe it's society's norms and expectations that explains why women more often go into people-oriented jobs like teaching and nursing. When you look at it this way, you can see why the difference has political implications.

js8 8y ago
"It matters when you want to evaluate whether a group has gotten a bad deal in society." I am not sure why would I want to do that. As a leftist (being pro-equality), I don't really want there to be anybody who got a bad deal in society. But why should it matter which group are they part of? It seems chauvinistic to me.
- oarsinsync 8y ago
  > "It matters when you want to evaluate whether a group has gotten a bad deal in society." > I am not sure why would I want to do that. > As a leftist (being pro-equality), I don't really want there to be anybody who got a bad deal in society. I think the issue is that there are very large numbers of people who have gotten a bad deal in society. Investigating every individual, individually, is probably time and cost prohibitive. So investigating by common features across groups of individuals helps to try to maximise that return. While I think we'd all like to live in that utopia where nobody gets a bad deal in society, it's not the world we inhabit today, not even close.
  - js8 8y ago
    I disagree. We should look at people who got the bad deal directly (for example, are poor), not put them into some group. The latter is indirect and just more misleading. It is buying into a chauvinist narrative and strengthening it. "I think we'd all like to live in that utopia where nobody gets a bad deal in society" This is objectively not true. Many people don't care about other people getting bad deal.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I don't understand why people care so much whether preferences are biological or cultural. Basically because if it is cultural, it may be a form of brainwashing and the expressed preference may actually be something they loathe, but don't feel empowered to reject. Whether or not you think this matters for purposes of making policy, it matters a whole lot for purposes of an individual figuring out how to create a good life for themselves.

js8 8y ago
"the expressed preference may actually be something they loathe, but don't feel empowered to reject" But we can ask them, right? We can ask e.g. nurses and computer programmers whether or not they loathe the choice of their profession. If there is e.g. relatively more computer programmers loathing it than nurses then you have an evidence of culturally pushed preference (towards computer programming, in this case), regardless what the gender ratio in those fields is. "it matters a whole lot for purposes of an individual figuring out how to create a good life for themselves" I already responded to that, basically I don't think it matters for an individual: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381148
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  "Learned helplessness" is a thing. If people have been told their entire lives from birth that X is strictly Verboten and they can only answer Y to that question, they may literally be unable to tell you that. They may not really understand it themselves. It may be literally unspeakable and even unthinkable.
  - js8 8y ago
    It might well be a thing but I am not sure if I can truly (or should) help somebody who explicitly says that there is no problem and they don't need help. Assuming they are deemed to be legally competent.
    - 8y ago

ramblerman 8y ago

Because if it is purely cultural then aiming for 50/50 gender parity across all industries is a reasonable goal. If it is not, it is a 'terrible', 'terrible' idea to approach gender equality from that angle.

apatters 8y ago
Why would 50/50 gender parity across all industries ever be a desirable goal? Coal mining is male dominated -- should we push more women into becoming coal miners?
- alliecat 8y ago
  Coal mining is a historic industry; we should not be pushing anybody into coal mining (Looking at you, Australia) I’m assuming you picked coal mining because it’s an example of a dirty, dangerous position in an industry that’s rightfully stigmatised by most modern countries. If you’re suggesting that we shouldn’t push women into dangerous jobs but it’s okay to push men into them, then I would counter that we should make dangerous jobs safer for everybody and no, there’s no fundamental reason that women should not have the opportunity to work in these industries.
  - apatters 8y ago
    > If you’re suggesting that we shouldn’t push women into dangerous jobs but it’s okay to push men into them No I didn't suggest this. My question was not about energy policies. Let's substitute coal miners for waste collectors (colloquially referred to as garbage men, because 99% of them are male), and ask the question again. Garbage collection is male dominated -- should we push more women into becoming garbage collectors?
    - izzydata 8y ago
      We shouldn't push anyone into anything. Why is it ok for a man to be a garbage collector and not a woman? That sounds like gender inequality to me. You can't have it both ways.

0x445442 8y ago

> I don't understand why people care so much whether preferences are biological or cultural. Because the individual can't claim oppression as the cause for something like average pay differences when the individual chooses to go into a field that pays less on average.

perpetualcrayon 8y ago

From a personal / everyday perspective it's probably not that interesting. But uncovering the inherent nature of something, regardless of what it is, is always going to be interesting to large numbers of people.

dwild 8y ago

We have control over cultural things and if theses things bring a life that we can define as inferior, then I believe we should change that culture. The culture make women an object of desire, which increase sexual misconduct toward them. We can change that culture, shouldn't we? Look at women in the middle east, that's purely cultural. Is it alright? Culture bring racism, is it alright? >what does it matter what is the reason for these preferences? The same way we can fix a bug in a software, we can fix our culture to remove theses faults. Equal opportunities means that there's no fault. We are equals, thus there's no reason for culture to make us different. It's alright for a men to want to raise his family, he shouldn't have to bear the weight of the culture that tell him that it's his wife job to do it.