5 ms·

It shouldn't be controversial to say that on average, men are taller than women. However it is a problem to say that "since you are a woman, I infer that you mu

It shouldn't be controversial to say that on average, men are taller than women. However it is a problem to say that "since you are a woman, I infer that you must be short". The difference is (not really) subtle but the first statement can be true while the latter statement is obviously fallacious. With an objective quantity like height it's easy to see the error, but harder with less well-defined quantities like intelligence, character, etc.. It's frustrating to see people talk past each other with ill-defined terms.

daenz 5y ago
>It shouldn't be controversial to say that on average, men are taller than women. However it is a problem to say that "since you are a woman, I infer that you must be short". The difference is (not really) subtle but the first statement can be true while the latter statement is obviously fallacious. I agree, but the person I was speaking about specifically was the former, not the latter. They were extremely resistant to the idea of measurable biological differences. This is an intelligent, science-believing person. I think there are a few main groups that people fall into around these kinds of subjects: 1) People who suspect that there may be differences in groups of people, but know that acknowledging them will probably lead to arguments that support sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc (because they have historically), and so they avoid acknowledging any differences that can't be explained by bias. 2) People who want there to be differences in people so that they can justify their biases against groups of people. 3) People who don't want there to be differences in people, because it doesn't align with a fair worldview that they want to be real. 4) Everyone else who just want people to be honest about potentially uncomfortable truths.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  Where are all the #4s?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mhuffman 5y ago
    >Where are all the #4s? Everywhere! What is missing from the #4 sentence is "... and brave or reckless enough to actually discuss any of those things in public when 'wrong-think' can possibly lose you your job, social connections, and who knows what else going forward, since everything on the Internet is permanent now".
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  I'm going to steelman the opposing argument while keeping the presumption of a biological sex-binary (i.e. we'll ignore complications like chromosomal abnormalities). This gets complicated when you start to differentiate between hormones and genes, as might happen when you involve trans people. My understanding (and a cursory search seems to back this up) is that pre-puberty, height isn't different based on chromosomes. Its only post puberty that this difference occurs (and of course there's points in time where in aggregate, girls are taller than boys, as they hit puberty earlier). So your claim is that there are chromosomal height differences. But assuming that there are enough trans people in the population, and specifically trans people who had hormone therapy through their pubescence, self-identified gender might be a better predictor, because you'll have someone with XX chromosomes who identifies as a man and had a male puberty in terms of hormone levels. This get's very subtle, because then "men are taller than women" remains true, while "measurable biological differences" may be false, or at least...less true. Yet you presented these, offhandedly, as equivalent statements. I don't think rejecting that premise (or at least, not taking it as a given) is fundamentally anti-science.
  - dkshdkjshdk 5y ago
    I understand what you're trying to say but, in this situation you are describing, the "good predictor" is not really your self-identified gender, but whether you were subjected or not to a "male-like" hormone profile during your puberty (either due to endogenous processes or through exogenous means). A XX person that self-identifies as male and hasn't been subjected to hormone treatments is less likely to display male-like traits (incluiding the hypothetical "higher height" we are discussing about) than a XX person that identifies as female and has been subjected to a "male-like" hormone profile by exogenous means. Finally, just because "measurable biological differences" may be mediated/caused by differences in hormone levels, rather than differences in genes, doesn't make them any "less true".
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      Overall, I agree with your first two paragraphs (I was letting "and specifically trans people who had hormone therapy through their pubescence" do a lot of work). > Finally, just because "measurable biological differences" may be mediated/caused by differences in hormone levels, rather than differences in genes, doesn't make them any "less true". Sure, but my point is that if exogenous hormonal puberty becomes common enough (like, 50% of the population opts in to them), you can end up in a situation where in aggregate there are no measurable differences. You have equal numbers of XX women and XX men, and XY women and XY men. And all the men and all the women have equivalent heights, irrespective of their genes. In such a situation genetics cease to be predictive of height, while gender remains predictive. I acknowledge that such a situation is unlikely, but it should still cause one to second guess the "biological" nature of the differences. I think there's another interpretation of what you're saying which is that given two XX-chromosomal people, one who had a male-like puberty and one who had a female-like puberty, they present biological differences. I'm not sure if that stance would be widely accepted, but let's assume for a second its true. Then I can construct sort of the opposite of the prior situation: a society where a huge number of people transitioned post-puberty, and so now identify as the opposite of the gender they went through puberty as. If we look at biology, there's a clear mapping from chromosomes to height. If we look at gender, there's no correlation (there are tall men and short men, and tall women and short women, in approximately equal numbers and so you end up with two bimodal distributions). In this situation, we don't really have measurable aggregate biological differences between the men and women. This is really the point I'm getting at, talking about biological differences between men and women get's very complex very quickly assuming you want to consider trans people. And really complex may be the wrong word, "completely not useful" is perhaps better, because (at least usually) biological categorization comes from genes. We end up with 3 possible predictors for height: genes, hormonal-gender-at-puberty, and gender-today. Its not clear to me, when talking about biological differences, which of these three predictors we want to use, or even if we want to use biological differences, and we were seemingly assuming we'd use only one of them.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  The so-called "uncomfortable truths" might just be "uncomfortable" for you right now, but if you end up on the wrong statistical end of one of them, your life could be ruined. There are very, very practical problems here. It's not about nebulously wanting to avoid enforcing stereotypes. It's about avoiding very real and very negative outcomes for unsuspecting and innocent individuals. It's the same exact reason why "racial profiling" by the police is unequivocally and universally considered unjust and bad, except by racists who like to quote statistics as a kind of pragmatist veneer. What's worse is that you could end up racially profiling people without even meaning to, either by omission (not enough people who look like X in the data) or by technical limitations (apparently facial recognition algorithms struggle with dark skin even on balanced datasets). There is a lot of very interesting and important work to be done in this area.
tbrownaw 5y ago
> However it is a problem to say that "since you are a woman, I infer that you must be short". Sure, replacing "much more likely" with "definitely" is inaccurate. And if you're assuming that whoever's saying this has more data available - like actually meeting wherever they're talking about - then well discarding information is also silly.

daenz 5y ago

>It shouldn't be controversial to say that on average, men are taller than women. However it is a problem to say that "since you are a woman, I infer that you must be short". The difference is (not really) subtle but the first statement can be true while the latter statement is obviously fallacious. I agree, but the person I was speaking about specifically was the former, not the latter. They were extremely resistant to the idea of measurable biological differences. This is an intelligent, science-believing person. I think there are a few main groups that people fall into around these kinds of subjects: 1) People who suspect that there may be differences in groups of people, but know that acknowledging them will probably lead to arguments that support sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc (because they have historically), and so they avoid acknowledging any differences that can't be explained by bias. 2) People who want there to be differences in people so that they can justify their biases against groups of people. 3) People who don't want there to be differences in people, because it doesn't align with a fair worldview that they want to be real. 4) Everyone else who just want people to be honest about potentially uncomfortable truths.

jimmygrapes 5y ago
Where are all the #4s?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mhuffman 5y ago
  >Where are all the #4s? Everywhere! What is missing from the #4 sentence is "... and brave or reckless enough to actually discuss any of those things in public when 'wrong-think' can possibly lose you your job, social connections, and who knows what else going forward, since everything on the Internet is permanent now".
joshuamorton 5y ago
I'm going to steelman the opposing argument while keeping the presumption of a biological sex-binary (i.e. we'll ignore complications like chromosomal abnormalities). This gets complicated when you start to differentiate between hormones and genes, as might happen when you involve trans people. My understanding (and a cursory search seems to back this up) is that pre-puberty, height isn't different based on chromosomes. Its only post puberty that this difference occurs (and of course there's points in time where in aggregate, girls are taller than boys, as they hit puberty earlier). So your claim is that there are chromosomal height differences. But assuming that there are enough trans people in the population, and specifically trans people who had hormone therapy through their pubescence, self-identified gender might be a better predictor, because you'll have someone with XX chromosomes who identifies as a man and had a male puberty in terms of hormone levels. This get's very subtle, because then "men are taller than women" remains true, while "measurable biological differences" may be false, or at least...less true. Yet you presented these, offhandedly, as equivalent statements. I don't think rejecting that premise (or at least, not taking it as a given) is fundamentally anti-science.
- dkshdkjshdk 5y ago
  I understand what you're trying to say but, in this situation you are describing, the "good predictor" is not really your self-identified gender, but whether you were subjected or not to a "male-like" hormone profile during your puberty (either due to endogenous processes or through exogenous means). A XX person that self-identifies as male and hasn't been subjected to hormone treatments is less likely to display male-like traits (incluiding the hypothetical "higher height" we are discussing about) than a XX person that identifies as female and has been subjected to a "male-like" hormone profile by exogenous means. Finally, just because "measurable biological differences" may be mediated/caused by differences in hormone levels, rather than differences in genes, doesn't make them any "less true".
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    Overall, I agree with your first two paragraphs (I was letting "and specifically trans people who had hormone therapy through their pubescence" do a lot of work). > Finally, just because "measurable biological differences" may be mediated/caused by differences in hormone levels, rather than differences in genes, doesn't make them any "less true". Sure, but my point is that if exogenous hormonal puberty becomes common enough (like, 50% of the population opts in to them), you can end up in a situation where in aggregate there are no measurable differences. You have equal numbers of XX women and XX men, and XY women and XY men. And all the men and all the women have equivalent heights, irrespective of their genes. In such a situation genetics cease to be predictive of height, while gender remains predictive. I acknowledge that such a situation is unlikely, but it should still cause one to second guess the "biological" nature of the differences. I think there's another interpretation of what you're saying which is that given two XX-chromosomal people, one who had a male-like puberty and one who had a female-like puberty, they present biological differences. I'm not sure if that stance would be widely accepted, but let's assume for a second its true. Then I can construct sort of the opposite of the prior situation: a society where a huge number of people transitioned post-puberty, and so now identify as the opposite of the gender they went through puberty as. If we look at biology, there's a clear mapping from chromosomes to height. If we look at gender, there's no correlation (there are tall men and short men, and tall women and short women, in approximately equal numbers and so you end up with two bimodal distributions). In this situation, we don't really have measurable aggregate biological differences between the men and women. This is really the point I'm getting at, talking about biological differences between men and women get's very complex very quickly assuming you want to consider trans people. And really complex may be the wrong word, "completely not useful" is perhaps better, because (at least usually) biological categorization comes from genes. We end up with 3 possible predictors for height: genes, hormonal-gender-at-puberty, and gender-today. Its not clear to me, when talking about biological differences, which of these three predictors we want to use, or even if we want to use biological differences, and we were seemingly assuming we'd use only one of them.
nerdponx 5y ago
The so-called "uncomfortable truths" might just be "uncomfortable" for you right now, but if you end up on the wrong statistical end of one of them, your life could be ruined. There are very, very practical problems here. It's not about nebulously wanting to avoid enforcing stereotypes. It's about avoiding very real and very negative outcomes for unsuspecting and innocent individuals. It's the same exact reason why "racial profiling" by the police is unequivocally and universally considered unjust and bad, except by racists who like to quote statistics as a kind of pragmatist veneer. What's worse is that you could end up racially profiling people without even meaning to, either by omission (not enough people who look like X in the data) or by technical limitations (apparently facial recognition algorithms struggle with dark skin even on balanced datasets). There is a lot of very interesting and important work to be done in this area.

tbrownaw 5y ago

> However it is a problem to say that "since you are a woman, I infer that you must be short". Sure, replacing "much more likely" with "definitely" is inaccurate. And if you're assuming that whoever's saying this has more data available - like actually meeting wherever they're talking about - then well discarding information is also silly.