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Indeed, and what is strange to me is that people who claim to pursue an "egalitarian" society don't see that as the inevitable outcome. A perfectly egalitarian

Indeed, and what is strange to me is that people who claim to pursue an "egalitarian" society don't see that as the inevitable outcome. A perfectly egalitarian society would eliminate all societal influence on decision-making, leaving people perfectly free to do whatever they want with their life, not pushed in any particular direction. What happens when you manage that? Well, the only thing that will be impacting decision-making becomes your innate characteristics. And what is arguably the biggest single variable you can change to guarantee large differences in innate characteristics? Sex. In terms of lived experience, an X man and a Y man (e.g. short and tall) will be closer together than an X man and an X woman. As such, your gender gaps will only get larger as you remove societal influence from the process, not smaller, because gender is the single biggest discriminator when comparing two people.

okareaman 6y ago
I've observed that in informal gatherings of Caucasian and African-American men and women, that the women sort themselves with women and the men sort themselves with men. Sex overrides race. I can't be sure I'm not experiencing a confirmation bias, so I put this forth only as a casual observation.
- orwin 6y ago
  Race means you forced people to inbreed, thus creating a "race". Let bastard dogs breed with each other and you will get the most stable staple of what a dog really is in size and comportment. And also understand that dogs are not as dumb as the pure raced element of the species show. Are those people of really different income levels? Class trumps ethnicity, and gender self-segregate within the class. Note that maybe gender segregate since a long time and this is indeed a genetic code. But this is impossible to test against. So it is not really interesting, and a more philosophical debate right now.
  - okareaman 6y ago
    > Race means you forced people to inbreed, thus creating a "race" I'm curious who you think forced Chinese to become Chinese and Aborigines to become Aborigines, etc... You could define race away and say we are all human, but that is also not interesting.
bjourne 6y ago
I can think of many attributes that are likely to affect people more than gender. Age, fitness level, education level, political affiliation, friendships, mental health, ethnicity, political status, etc. I'm not convinced that gender is the most important differentiator.
- fastball 6y ago
  Not when you remove the societal influence, e.g. pretend you have these people alone on an island. You think the lived experience of a fat man and a skinny man is further apart than the lived experience of a fat woman and a fat man? Or a black man and a white man vs a black man and woman? Of course if you go to excessive extremes those will start to outshine others, e.g. if you have two 700lbs people who (due to their weight) are – not walking, not having sex, not showering, not able to see their feet, not doing much of anything but eat, then yes probably the man and woman will be closer in their 700lbs lived experience. But that's the exception that proves the rule. The key of course is that something we typically pretend is one variable (man vs woman) is actually a collection of 100, where as any of the other things you mention are typically much smaller in scope.
  - bjourne 6y ago
    You haven't offered any evidence on why a random man in, say, the U.S. has more in common with a random man in, say, Sierra Leone than, say, a man or a woman who may be siblings or even twins. You think it is one way and I think it is the other. I guess we have to agree to disagree.
    - fastball 6y ago
      Actually I believe the issue here is that you are struggling to understand what I mean when I say "remove societal influence". Where you are born is literally only societal influence, that's not an innate property at all. In fact it is almost as far as you can get from an innate property. You're also pointing out extreme outliers as some sort of gotcha when the entire point is talking about population-level discrepancies and averages. Indeed, you can cherry pick whatever you want in order to get desired results. The question is, when you select two people completely at random, and you only look at intrinsic characteristics, will sex be the biggest differentiator on average? You might disagree, but the vast majority of people will not. Said another way, which is more common throughout history – societies that segregate based on sex, or societies that segregate based on weight? When I say "men are stronger than women", is your response really to say "well I bet I can cherry pick a woman and cherry pick a man and the woman will be stronger than the man"? You can do that of course, but that would clearly not be taking my argument in good faith.

okareaman 6y ago

I've observed that in informal gatherings of Caucasian and African-American men and women, that the women sort themselves with women and the men sort themselves with men. Sex overrides race. I can't be sure I'm not experiencing a confirmation bias, so I put this forth only as a casual observation.

orwin 6y ago
Race means you forced people to inbreed, thus creating a "race". Let bastard dogs breed with each other and you will get the most stable staple of what a dog really is in size and comportment. And also understand that dogs are not as dumb as the pure raced element of the species show. Are those people of really different income levels? Class trumps ethnicity, and gender self-segregate within the class. Note that maybe gender segregate since a long time and this is indeed a genetic code. But this is impossible to test against. So it is not really interesting, and a more philosophical debate right now.
- okareaman 6y ago
  > Race means you forced people to inbreed, thus creating a "race" I'm curious who you think forced Chinese to become Chinese and Aborigines to become Aborigines, etc... You could define race away and say we are all human, but that is also not interesting.

bjourne 6y ago

I can think of many attributes that are likely to affect people more than gender. Age, fitness level, education level, political affiliation, friendships, mental health, ethnicity, political status, etc. I'm not convinced that gender is the most important differentiator.

fastball 6y ago
Not when you remove the societal influence, e.g. pretend you have these people alone on an island. You think the lived experience of a fat man and a skinny man is further apart than the lived experience of a fat woman and a fat man? Or a black man and a white man vs a black man and woman? Of course if you go to excessive extremes those will start to outshine others, e.g. if you have two 700lbs people who (due to their weight) are – not walking, not having sex, not showering, not able to see their feet, not doing much of anything but eat, then yes probably the man and woman will be closer in their 700lbs lived experience. But that's the exception that proves the rule. The key of course is that something we typically pretend is one variable (man vs woman) is actually a collection of 100, where as any of the other things you mention are typically much smaller in scope.
- bjourne 6y ago
  You haven't offered any evidence on why a random man in, say, the U.S. has more in common with a random man in, say, Sierra Leone than, say, a man or a woman who may be siblings or even twins. You think it is one way and I think it is the other. I guess we have to agree to disagree.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Actually I believe the issue here is that you are struggling to understand what I mean when I say "remove societal influence". Where you are born is literally only societal influence, that's not an innate property at all. In fact it is almost as far as you can get from an innate property. You're also pointing out extreme outliers as some sort of gotcha when the entire point is talking about population-level discrepancies and averages. Indeed, you can cherry pick whatever you want in order to get desired results. The question is, when you select two people completely at random, and you only look at intrinsic characteristics, will sex be the biggest differentiator on average? You might disagree, but the vast majority of people will not. Said another way, which is more common throughout history – societies that segregate based on sex, or societies that segregate based on weight? When I say "men are stronger than women", is your response really to say "well I bet I can cherry pick a woman and cherry pick a man and the woman will be stronger than the man"? You can do that of course, but that would clearly not be taking my argument in good faith.