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First, let me just say this paragraph alone made the article worth the read... Seeing all this, the feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society

First, let me just say this paragraph alone made the article worth the read... Seeing all this, the feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society is set up to favor men. It must be great to be a man. The mistake in that way of thinking is to look only at the top. If one were to look downward to the bottom of society instead, one finds mostly men there too. Who’s in prison, all over the world, as criminals or political prisoners? The population on Death Row has never approached 51% female. Who’s homeless? Again, mostly men. Whom does society use for bad or dangerous jobs? US Department of Labor statistics report that 93% of the people killed on the job are men. Likewise, who gets killed in battle? Even in today’s American army, which has made much of integrating the sexes and putting women into combat, the risks aren’t equal. This year we passed the milestone of 3,000 deaths in Iraq, and of those, 2,938 were men, 62 were women. With that said I don’t agree with the premise of this article. The problem I have with classic feminism AND the people making counter arguments (like this article) is it’s all inherently irrational. In the end the rational thing to do in society is to match each job with the person who has the most compatible skill set. Whether that person is man, woman, monkey, or whatever doesn’t really matter. Now some say these arguments have to be made to stop people who believe women are inherently inferior to men. Well the problem with that is you’re trying to use a rational argument to convince someone who has decided to disregard any rationality. It’s dumb foundingly obvious that some women are better than their male counterparts. In the end the most disturbing thing about this article, imho, is the fact that someone felt the need to right it in the first place. I mean, if there really is someone out there who thinks either sex is expendable is there really any point in trying to convince them otherwise?

amichail 18y ago
Now some say these arguments have to be made to stop people who believe women are inherently inferior to men. Well the problem with that is you’re trying to use a rational argument to convince someone who has decided to disregard any rationality. It’s dumb foundingly obvious that some women are better than their male counterparts. This makes no sense. Obviously when you say group X is better than group Y, you don't mean that the worst member of X is better than the best member of Y. You might mean that average ability in X is better than average ability in Y, or perhaps, that the best people in some domain tend to come from X.
- TomOfTTB 18y ago
  Not really. You're taking things out of context by putting things in the macro instead of the micro. I have no problem with someone saying "men are usually stronger than women." That's statistics. But Anti-discrimination laws are designed to keep someone who is offering a job from picking a less qualified man over a more qualified woman. So if someone had a job that required strength and hired the man even though the woman was stronger that would be irrational. So you see, one's a macro discussion and the other's a micro one. In the macro using statistics is rational in the micro it's not.
  - amichail 18y ago
    Who would argue with you about the micro? That's obvious. The article is about the macro.
    - TomOfTTB 18y ago
      Ummm...Anyone who wrote, voted for, or is in favor of the millions of anti-discrimination laws that are in place in every country in the world. As for the article it was a counter point to classic feminism which is the movement that was behind all the aforementioned laws.
      - amichail 18y ago
        I mean almost anyone would agree that you should pick the better candidate for a job. That point is obvious. Some may argue that it should be ok to discriminate in the presence of insufficient information. While that may be rational in a probabilistic sense if you are lazy, it should be and is illegal. Anti-discrimination laws force you to evaluate the candidates more carefully, and ultimately, to pick better candidates for the job.
        TomOfTTB 18y ago
        But why are the anti-discrimination laws necessary? You really have to try to step out of your own perspective for a second and realize that maybe not everyone is enlightened as you. That the whole purpose of feminism is to fight against those who are not as enlightened as y ou. You saying "almost anyone would agree you should pick the better candidate" tells me that you can't see out of your own perspective long enough to realize there is discrimination out there. Which is why you can't see my point. My whole point was that these people are out there and that reasoning with them is pointless BECAUSE they aren't making a rational decision in the first place. So the feminist who try to fight against them with rational arguments are wasting their time BECAUSE those people have choosen to disregard all rational evidence.
s_tec 18y ago
Let me see if I get this straight: 1. You believe that jobs should go to the best-qualified candidates. 2. You believe that irrational beliefs about gender differences prevent this from happening. 3. The article claims that gender differences are real. 4. Therefore, you call the article disturbing and suggest that the author is irrational (last paragraph). This is a poor line of reasoning. You and the author have different explanations, but instead of challenging the author's reasoning or providing evidence for your own, you seem to dismiss the entire article out of hand. If you really believe that an irrational hiring bias is at work here, I would like to see some arguments. Small biases certainly exist, but I doubt that they explain the dramatic gender gap. There is a reason no woman has been president of the United States, and I don't think that biases are a sufficient explanation. This problem is as old as civilization itself, and that suggests that something deeper is at work.
tome 18y ago
Apparently, when Charles Goren was asked which sex was better at bridge, he replied: “Women are better; men are best.” http://dailypundit.com/?p=3388 http://dailypundit.com/?p=3388
cousin_it 18y ago
In the end the rational thing to do in society is to match each job with the person who has the most compatible skill set. This point is far from obvious. What if I don't like the job that your rational algorithm assigns to me? Whenever people say something is "rational for society", they make two leaps of reason: 1) That individual people act as to maximize the value of some function. This is a factual statement, but utterly unfounded (Allais paradox, preference reversals etc.) and IMO incorrect. 2) That it's okay to aggregate the utility functions of many different people into a "common rational direction" for society, to be enforced by the state or other powerful agents. This is a moral statement that has been convincingly demonstrated to be repugnant by any number of 20th century socialist regimes. Tl;dr stop telling me what's rational for me.

amichail 18y ago

Now some say these arguments have to be made to stop people who believe women are inherently inferior to men. Well the problem with that is you’re trying to use a rational argument to convince someone who has decided to disregard any rationality. It’s dumb foundingly obvious that some women are better than their male counterparts. This makes no sense. Obviously when you say group X is better than group Y, you don't mean that the worst member of X is better than the best member of Y. You might mean that average ability in X is better than average ability in Y, or perhaps, that the best people in some domain tend to come from X.

TomOfTTB 18y ago
Not really. You're taking things out of context by putting things in the macro instead of the micro. I have no problem with someone saying "men are usually stronger than women." That's statistics. But Anti-discrimination laws are designed to keep someone who is offering a job from picking a less qualified man over a more qualified woman. So if someone had a job that required strength and hired the man even though the woman was stronger that would be irrational. So you see, one's a macro discussion and the other's a micro one. In the macro using statistics is rational in the micro it's not.
- amichail 18y ago
  Who would argue with you about the micro? That's obvious. The article is about the macro.
  - TomOfTTB 18y ago
    Ummm...Anyone who wrote, voted for, or is in favor of the millions of anti-discrimination laws that are in place in every country in the world. As for the article it was a counter point to classic feminism which is the movement that was behind all the aforementioned laws.
    - amichail 18y ago
      I mean almost anyone would agree that you should pick the better candidate for a job. That point is obvious. Some may argue that it should be ok to discriminate in the presence of insufficient information. While that may be rational in a probabilistic sense if you are lazy, it should be and is illegal. Anti-discrimination laws force you to evaluate the candidates more carefully, and ultimately, to pick better candidates for the job.
      - TomOfTTB 18y ago
        But why are the anti-discrimination laws necessary? You really have to try to step out of your own perspective for a second and realize that maybe not everyone is enlightened as you. That the whole purpose of feminism is to fight against those who are not as enlightened as y ou. You saying "almost anyone would agree you should pick the better candidate" tells me that you can't see out of your own perspective long enough to realize there is discrimination out there. Which is why you can't see my point. My whole point was that these people are out there and that reasoning with them is pointless BECAUSE they aren't making a rational decision in the first place. So the feminist who try to fight against them with rational arguments are wasting their time BECAUSE those people have choosen to disregard all rational evidence.

s_tec 18y ago

Let me see if I get this straight: 1. You believe that jobs should go to the best-qualified candidates. 2. You believe that irrational beliefs about gender differences prevent this from happening. 3. The article claims that gender differences are real. 4. Therefore, you call the article disturbing and suggest that the author is irrational (last paragraph). This is a poor line of reasoning. You and the author have different explanations, but instead of challenging the author's reasoning or providing evidence for your own, you seem to dismiss the entire article out of hand. If you really believe that an irrational hiring bias is at work here, I would like to see some arguments. Small biases certainly exist, but I doubt that they explain the dramatic gender gap. There is a reason no woman has been president of the United States, and I don't think that biases are a sufficient explanation. This problem is as old as civilization itself, and that suggests that something deeper is at work.

tome 18y ago

Apparently, when Charles Goren was asked which sex was better at bridge, he replied: “Women are better; men are best.” http://dailypundit.com/?p=3388 http://dailypundit.com/?p=3388

cousin_it 18y ago

In the end the rational thing to do in society is to match each job with the person who has the most compatible skill set. This point is far from obvious. What if I don't like the job that your rational algorithm assigns to me? Whenever people say something is "rational for society", they make two leaps of reason: 1) That individual people act as to maximize the value of some function. This is a factual statement, but utterly unfounded (Allais paradox, preference reversals etc.) and IMO incorrect. 2) That it's okay to aggregate the utility functions of many different people into a "common rational direction" for society, to be enforced by the state or other powerful agents. This is a moral statement that has been convincingly demonstrated to be repugnant by any number of 20th century socialist regimes. Tl;dr stop telling me what's rational for me.