4 ms·

I don't think biology explains away the gender gap.

asabjorn 8y ago
How do you then explain that the gender gap increase the more equal countries are [1, 2]? This doesn't mean that one gender is more capable than the other, women actually do as well on average in the sciences as men, but it seems to indicate that the genders does not make the same choices if social or economic limitations are removed. Also, why are the choices women make in countries like Norway inferior to the choices they make in less gender equal countries? [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... [2] https://phys.org/news/2018-10-personality-differences-sexes-largest-gender.html https://phys.org/news/2018-10-personality-differences-sexes-...
adrianN 8y ago
Just hinting that biology might explain some of the variation is becoming taboo.
candiodari 8y ago
I think the main reason there is so much opposition is what happens when it does. Then there is no reason to change the laws/policies (because they don't override how humans are built). That means there is no reason for the careers of politicians and activists and no money for the initiatives to fix it. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In practice, of course, biology explains a large portion of differences between humans, both where it pertains to gender, and where it pertains to race. There are a few "forbidden truths" for them: 1) That there are in fact biological reasons for some aspects of a gender gap. 2) More general there are reasons for discrimination in certain limited cases (it used to be the case that the law had specific exceptions for diversity regulations. The big example given was "no cripples in the emergency response team in the fire department" (I think you can imagine why). That was a valid discriminatory demand that could be put in job applications) 3) There can be no differences in the source population (because ... well if you calculate it out specifically, then the Bay Area is not racist in hiring at all. But wait ! Why are there soooo few blacks working for the Bay Area tech companies ? Why so many Asians ? Well ... those values are very close to what you'd expect them to be if well-established (but heavily denied) racial differences in intelligence are taking into account and one assumes that when silicon valley invites 10 people to compete for a job, they hire the smartest) So in order to have "equality", defined as "distribution in the winners of competitions is the same as the distribution of participants" you can't have even tiny differences at all in the population beyond their proportion of the population, otherwise that'll never happen. Unfortunately there's another problem here (see next point) Of course the whole reason different races exist is to have them be different. I mean from the perspective of evolution, which while it isn't a conscious entity, does have both the means to change humans and a reason to do so (a goal to achieve). This means races/genders don't just differ in skin color, they differ in anything. Obviously the skin is one important difference, but it is just one component of profound differences in energy regulation of the body, which affects nearly everything relating to energy use in the body, which ... even affects brain size. Specifically one big difference between races is how much energy gets dedicated to body temperature maintenance (cooling and warming are different systems, so that's 2 separate things), digestion, muscles/movement, and ... yes ... how much energy gets dedicated to thinking, and even the balance between cortex and neocortex. And if it favors the cortex, that is just not going to help out your chess game. It even affects how big you are on average (of course bigger = everything requires more energy, because the human body is not that different from a robot. Fortunately bigger requires exponentially more energy, so the differences there can't be that big) 4) The effect of average differences on competitions. Specifically, say you have group 1 and group 2, and they compete. Let's assume N(100, 10) distribution. Let's say group 1 has a x% higher average, how often would a one-on-one competition between a member of group 1 and group 2 end in favor of the member of group 1 ? Let's call that value y. for x = 1%, odds of group 1 winning = 53.01% for x = 2%, odds of group 1 winning = 55.57% for x = 5%, odds of group 1 winning = 64.04% for x = 10%, odds of group 1 winning = 76.08% for x = 20%, odds of group 1 winning = 92.19% And if you have repeated competitions (you only advance to the next round if you win round 1, and there's N rounds) ... it gets pretty bad pretty rapidly. So unfortunately competition amplifies small differences in averages. Although this is to be expected, this is why natural selection works.
- asabjorn 8y ago
  You make some good points, but I would like to add caveats on the usefulness to think in terms of groups when judging an individual and make the point that group inferences has severe limitations when making decisions about an individual. There are bigger differences within groups than between them, although there are also large differences between groups. For instance, people of jewish descent have an average IQ that is much higher than any other group. However, if you are trying to find the best person for a cognitively demanding job or to build a relationship with them then it doesn't matter what the average for any group you might perceive them as part of is as you might need an individual that belong to a small subset of any group. That is why we in the west made the essential discovery that we are different amongst so many dimensions that we in the end are a group of one, the individual, and that we should aspire to judge a person as an individual on their merit in any situation. Judging people as individuals goes against some of our basic tendencies as humans. Our natural tendency is to be tribal and to judge individuals for group "guilt". Our judicial and political system is intentionally adversarial to counter this tendency, and that is why we need to fight hard against anyone trying to destroy this process in the name of equity or because they think they deserve special treatment due to their group belongings.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    I am explicitly talking about the generally used definition of diversity, which I believe boils down to what I put in the comment: > "distribution in the winners of competitions is the same as the distribution of participants" (and sometimes even extended to the distribution of the population) Like you say, an individual's performance, like any other individual data point in statistics, can be anything, or anyone in this case. I should probably have mentioned that.
    - asabjorn 8y ago
      Makes sense. Yes, only a small subset of people in general have a good understanding of statistics. - People on the radical left without a good understanding of statistics are often outraged by how they misunderstand how statistical should be interpreted - People on the identarian right make outrageous statements the statistics can't support. I try to avoid both misunderstandings by explicitly stating the caveat.

How do you then explain that the gender gap increase the more equal countries are [1, 2]? This doesn't mean that one gender is more capable than the other, women actually do as well on average in the sciences as men, but it seems to indicate that the genders does not make the same choices if social or economic limitations are removed. Also, why are the choices women make in countries like Norway inferior to the choices they make in less gender equal countries? [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... [2] https://phys.org/news/2018-10-personality-differences-sexes-largest-gender.html https://phys.org/news/2018-10-personality-differences-sexes-...

adrianN 8y ago

Just hinting that biology might explain some of the variation is becoming taboo.

candiodari 8y ago

I think the main reason there is so much opposition is what happens when it does. Then there is no reason to change the laws/policies (because they don't override how humans are built). That means there is no reason for the careers of politicians and activists and no money for the initiatives to fix it. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In practice, of course, biology explains a large portion of differences between humans, both where it pertains to gender, and where it pertains to race. There are a few "forbidden truths" for them: 1) That there are in fact biological reasons for some aspects of a gender gap. 2) More general there are reasons for discrimination in certain limited cases (it used to be the case that the law had specific exceptions for diversity regulations. The big example given was "no cripples in the emergency response team in the fire department" (I think you can imagine why). That was a valid discriminatory demand that could be put in job applications) 3) There can be no differences in the source population (because ... well if you calculate it out specifically, then the Bay Area is not racist in hiring at all. But wait ! Why are there soooo few blacks working for the Bay Area tech companies ? Why so many Asians ? Well ... those values are very close to what you'd expect them to be if well-established (but heavily denied) racial differences in intelligence are taking into account and one assumes that when silicon valley invites 10 people to compete for a job, they hire the smartest) So in order to have "equality", defined as "distribution in the winners of competitions is the same as the distribution of participants" you can't have even tiny differences at all in the population beyond their proportion of the population, otherwise that'll never happen. Unfortunately there's another problem here (see next point) Of course the whole reason different races exist is to have them be different. I mean from the perspective of evolution, which while it isn't a conscious entity, does have both the means to change humans and a reason to do so (a goal to achieve). This means races/genders don't just differ in skin color, they differ in anything. Obviously the skin is one important difference, but it is just one component of profound differences in energy regulation of the body, which affects nearly everything relating to energy use in the body, which ... even affects brain size. Specifically one big difference between races is how much energy gets dedicated to body temperature maintenance (cooling and warming are different systems, so that's 2 separate things), digestion, muscles/movement, and ... yes ... how much energy gets dedicated to thinking, and even the balance between cortex and neocortex. And if it favors the cortex, that is just not going to help out your chess game. It even affects how big you are on average (of course bigger = everything requires more energy, because the human body is not that different from a robot. Fortunately bigger requires exponentially more energy, so the differences there can't be that big) 4) The effect of average differences on competitions. Specifically, say you have group 1 and group 2, and they compete. Let's assume N(100, 10) distribution. Let's say group 1 has a x% higher average, how often would a one-on-one competition between a member of group 1 and group 2 end in favor of the member of group 1 ? Let's call that value y. for x = 1%, odds of group 1 winning = 53.01% for x = 2%, odds of group 1 winning = 55.57% for x = 5%, odds of group 1 winning = 64.04% for x = 10%, odds of group 1 winning = 76.08% for x = 20%, odds of group 1 winning = 92.19% And if you have repeated competitions (you only advance to the next round if you win round 1, and there's N rounds) ... it gets pretty bad pretty rapidly. So unfortunately competition amplifies small differences in averages. Although this is to be expected, this is why natural selection works.

asabjorn 8y ago
You make some good points, but I would like to add caveats on the usefulness to think in terms of groups when judging an individual and make the point that group inferences has severe limitations when making decisions about an individual. There are bigger differences within groups than between them, although there are also large differences between groups. For instance, people of jewish descent have an average IQ that is much higher than any other group. However, if you are trying to find the best person for a cognitively demanding job or to build a relationship with them then it doesn't matter what the average for any group you might perceive them as part of is as you might need an individual that belong to a small subset of any group. That is why we in the west made the essential discovery that we are different amongst so many dimensions that we in the end are a group of one, the individual, and that we should aspire to judge a person as an individual on their merit in any situation. Judging people as individuals goes against some of our basic tendencies as humans. Our natural tendency is to be tribal and to judge individuals for group "guilt". Our judicial and political system is intentionally adversarial to counter this tendency, and that is why we need to fight hard against anyone trying to destroy this process in the name of equity or because they think they deserve special treatment due to their group belongings.
- candiodari 8y ago
  I am explicitly talking about the generally used definition of diversity, which I believe boils down to what I put in the comment: > "distribution in the winners of competitions is the same as the distribution of participants" (and sometimes even extended to the distribution of the population) Like you say, an individual's performance, like any other individual data point in statistics, can be anything, or anyone in this case. I should probably have mentioned that.
  - asabjorn 8y ago
    Makes sense. Yes, only a small subset of people in general have a good understanding of statistics. - People on the radical left without a good understanding of statistics are often outraged by how they misunderstand how statistical should be interpreted - People on the identarian right make outrageous statements the statistics can't support. I try to avoid both misunderstandings by explicitly stating the caveat.