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Well, a simple use case would be when deciding on policy that interfaces with gender. All else being equal you would expect that in each industry there would be
by burnished 6y ago
Well, a simple use case would be when deciding on policy that interfaces with gender. All else being equal you would expect that in each industry there would be a roughly equal division of men and women, and if it is not, you might conclude that there is a broad scale social problem. But if all else is not in fact equal then you can no longer support that conclusion, and a naive target of 50/50 representation no longer makes sense as a goal.
I'm not trying to say that there are no problems, just trying to point out that there is utility in a frank conversation about stuff like this.
- awb 6y agoI hear you, but in the past some bad science about race that was used to justify inequality. And the author admits it’s not clear how much of these reported differences are a factor of nature or nurture: > All of the findings I've presented up to this point are merely descriptive; they don't prescribe any particular course of action, and they do not say anything about the complex interplay of genetic and cultural influences that may cause these differences to arise in the first place. So I don’t understand why people are interested in this correlation when the causation is still up for debate.
- burnished 6y agoBecause they are interested in the debate. You're absolutely right that similar reasoning was used for some pretty appalling shit in the past, which is a reason for caution going forward, not a reason to pretend the conversation doesn't exist.