6 ms·

You mistake the population of women for some arbitrary selection. I don't think that your N-Z population will be suffering from systemic oppression. Perhaps yo

by aaren 13y ago

You mistake the population of women for some arbitrary selection. I don't think that your N-Z population will be suffering from systemic oppression. Perhaps your interpretation of uk history under represents the achievements of women? We are in a transition between a past where women are under-represented and a future in which women are well-represented equal members of society. This transition is not guaranteed to happen. Small things like ensuring the representation of women on bank notes are seen as helping this transition to occur.

yummyfajitas 13y ago
I don't "mistake" women for some arbitrary selection, I don't know what principle to use to distinguish between women and other subsets of Britain. Can you explain this principle? I'm not sure what "systemic oppression" is. If "systemic oppression" simply refers to individual bad acts that apply to some subpopulation at a disproportionate rate, here is a recipe for cooking up other "systemically oppressed" subsets: choose a group of 90% people who have suffered individual bad acts, throw in 10-20% more random people. You now have a group who has suffered individual bad acts at a disproportionate rate. How does your morality/political philosophy distinguish women from other statistically similar subsets? (Note that if it does not distinguish between such groups, you get an intractible ideology - there are more subsets of Britain like the one I described than there are atoms in the universe.)
- dkoston 13y ago
  It's been clearly documented that women are subject to lower wages(1) then men and while I don't have statistics about online harassment, women accounted for 84% of potential workplace harassment victims in 2007(2) which may or may not be similar to the online harassment gap. USC also did a study noting that men are less empathetic to discrimination(3) which can cause even more harm. You argue that choosing any subset is arbitrary but it is clearly not if we choose that subset based on a set of data that shows behavior which society disapproves of (attaching criteria to our subset inherently makes it non-arbitrary). Now, you could argue that choosing women as a subset is arbitrary because you don't think that the representation of people on money should be correlated to population statistics. However, why are you arguing against correlation for pictures on money but not also arguing that nothing should be correlated to population statistics at all (or perhaps your comment wasn't perfectly written? same as the article?). In general, it seems that you are also choosing to be arbitrary as well. In addition, you seem to lack compassion for other people who are expressing their concerns about their right to live a happy life, free from harassment. Whether or not you agree with the small details in the article or whether or not they are 100% accurate is not important. If you can't read the article for the overall concept it purveys, and feel some sympathy for the author, I feel sorry for you. (1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21698522 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21698522 (2) http://www.workharassment.net/index.php/sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace.html http://www.workharassment.net/index.php/sexual-harassment-in... (3) http://www.livescience.com/2428-men-discrimination-women.html http://www.livescience.com/2428-men-discrimination-women.htm...
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    Give me 85,000 people who have been victims of workplace harassment (of any gender), 15,000 more random people, and I've found a group who has suffered more workplace harassment than women. Why do you assign this arbitrary group no moral/political weight? (Again: there are orders of magnitude more such subgroups of Britain than there are cells in the human body. I don't understand how you pick one to the exclusion of all others.) However, why are you arguing against... I'm arguing nothing - I merely asked why CJefferson found a lack of non-royal women on money unacceptable. Then I asked drcongo (and later you and aaren) about your underlying political/moral philosophy. But everyone seems to be ducking the fundamental question. So I'll ask one more time before I give up. Consider a statistical reference class X, which suffers disproportionately from one or more harms. How do I determine whether X deserves moral/political consideration of the sort you are advocating for? (E.g., we should make sure more of X has their picture printed on money.)
    - aaren 13y ago
      The set W of women suffer harms because of their membership of that set. This property is mutable. You could make a number of other sets like this (non-white, old, young), but the largest one (esp. in the UK) is likely to be W, women (50% population). We should try and create an environment in which sets of people do not have this property anymore.
      - yummyfajitas 13y ago
        A set doesn't suffer anything, only individuals suffer. Some women (say 80%, for concreteness) have suffered because they are women. Consider the set WM consisting of those 80%, plus a random 20% of men. WM has the same statistical properties as W - it's members have suffered harms due to being a member of the set of suffering women + random people, and this group is also 50% of Britain. Is WM due the same moral consideration as W? You can't use only the statistical properties of a subset to determine it's moral weight. For nearly any statistic you can think of, there are massive (i.e., 2^bignum >> population of earth) numbers of statistically identical subsets.

by aaren 13y ago

yummyfajitas 13y ago

I don't "mistake" women for some arbitrary selection, I don't know what principle to use to distinguish between women and other subsets of Britain. Can you explain this principle? I'm not sure what "systemic oppression" is. If "systemic oppression" simply refers to individual bad acts that apply to some subpopulation at a disproportionate rate, here is a recipe for cooking up other "systemically oppressed" subsets: choose a group of 90% people who have suffered individual bad acts, throw in 10-20% more random people. You now have a group who has suffered individual bad acts at a disproportionate rate. How does your morality/political philosophy distinguish women from other statistically similar subsets? (Note that if it does not distinguish between such groups, you get an intractible ideology - there are more subsets of Britain like the one I described than there are atoms in the universe.)

dkoston 13y ago
It's been clearly documented that women are subject to lower wages(1) then men and while I don't have statistics about online harassment, women accounted for 84% of potential workplace harassment victims in 2007(2) which may or may not be similar to the online harassment gap. USC also did a study noting that men are less empathetic to discrimination(3) which can cause even more harm. You argue that choosing any subset is arbitrary but it is clearly not if we choose that subset based on a set of data that shows behavior which society disapproves of (attaching criteria to our subset inherently makes it non-arbitrary). Now, you could argue that choosing women as a subset is arbitrary because you don't think that the representation of people on money should be correlated to population statistics. However, why are you arguing against correlation for pictures on money but not also arguing that nothing should be correlated to population statistics at all (or perhaps your comment wasn't perfectly written? same as the article?). In general, it seems that you are also choosing to be arbitrary as well. In addition, you seem to lack compassion for other people who are expressing their concerns about their right to live a happy life, free from harassment. Whether or not you agree with the small details in the article or whether or not they are 100% accurate is not important. If you can't read the article for the overall concept it purveys, and feel some sympathy for the author, I feel sorry for you. (1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21698522 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21698522 (2) http://www.workharassment.net/index.php/sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace.html http://www.workharassment.net/index.php/sexual-harassment-in... (3) http://www.livescience.com/2428-men-discrimination-women.html http://www.livescience.com/2428-men-discrimination-women.htm...
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  Give me 85,000 people who have been victims of workplace harassment (of any gender), 15,000 more random people, and I've found a group who has suffered more workplace harassment than women. Why do you assign this arbitrary group no moral/political weight? (Again: there are orders of magnitude more such subgroups of Britain than there are cells in the human body. I don't understand how you pick one to the exclusion of all others.) However, why are you arguing against... I'm arguing nothing - I merely asked why CJefferson found a lack of non-royal women on money unacceptable. Then I asked drcongo (and later you and aaren) about your underlying political/moral philosophy. But everyone seems to be ducking the fundamental question. So I'll ask one more time before I give up. Consider a statistical reference class X, which suffers disproportionately from one or more harms. How do I determine whether X deserves moral/political consideration of the sort you are advocating for? (E.g., we should make sure more of X has their picture printed on money.)
  - aaren 13y ago
    The set W of women suffer harms because of their membership of that set. This property is mutable. You could make a number of other sets like this (non-white, old, young), but the largest one (esp. in the UK) is likely to be W, women (50% population). We should try and create an environment in which sets of people do not have this property anymore.
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      A set doesn't suffer anything, only individuals suffer. Some women (say 80%, for concreteness) have suffered because they are women. Consider the set WM consisting of those 80%, plus a random 20% of men. WM has the same statistical properties as W - it's members have suffered harms due to being a member of the set of suffering women + random people, and this group is also 50% of Britain. Is WM due the same moral consideration as W? You can't use only the statistical properties of a subset to determine it's moral weight. For nearly any statistic you can think of, there are massive (i.e., 2^bignum >> population of earth) numbers of statistically identical subsets.