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It's a logical error to look at the outcome of a process and draw conclusions about it with no other supporting data. This error would be innocuous if it wasn'
by drblast 16y ago
It's a logical error to look at the outcome of a process and draw conclusions about it with no other supporting data. This error would be innocuous if it wasn't the underlying cause of every inhuman prejudice we've spent the last few centuries trying to rid ourselves of.
If I were to say, "Since there are so few women contributing to open-source projects, it's obvious that women aren't capable of producing much valuable code," the hacker news server would melt from the angry response.
But apparently it's ok to say, "Since there are so few women contributing to Postgres, it's obvious that it's not a meritocracy." Logically, however, these statements are equally erroneous.
You can use this sort of pseudo-statistical handwaving to justify ANYTHING that sounds remotely plausible. That's ignorant, and that sort of ignorance should be opposed no matter the form.
- capstone 16y agoThere are exactly zero occurrences of the words "women" or "female" in the article. The only reference to gender at all is a brief and completely inconsequential mention of the fact that your typical Postgres hacker is, among other things, male. Yet somehow you end up debating the veracity of, "Since there are so few women contributing to Postgres, it's obvious that it's not a meritocracy", a statement neither made verbatim nor in any way implied by the actual article. Isn't it just a little crazy? Can a writer mention a simple fact without it becoming all about battle of the sexes?
- aplusbi 16y agoI don't believe that drblast was trying to make this about a battle of the sexes but was just using gender as an easily identifiable example. The article states that Postgres isn't a meritocracy because the hackers aren't from diverse backgrounds. drblast was attempting to show how this is a logical fallacy - meritocracies aren't ipso facto diverse.
- capstone 16y agoI think it's rather impractical to attempt to guess a stranger's intent. Drblast responded to the article by quoting a hypothetical statement of his own ("if I were to say X") and then quoting a supposed statement from the article ("but apparently it's ok to say Y"). You can interpret that 10 different ways but why? Isn't it simpler to point out that the article never made statement Y in the first place? Incidentally, I find the point you make - meritocracies aren't ipso facto diverse - worthy of debate. However I don't believe it's the same point as the parent.
- drblast 16y agoThe article said that the project was "dominated" by people who are "male," among other things. The logical error here is the point, not the specific characteristic of whatever group the author is concerned about. The point would be the same whether I had used her "male" example or her "affluent" example. She's making the same error in both cases.
- selenamarie 16y agoThanks for your thoughts! Made me think. I brought up privilege, not gender diversity.