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PG really only stirs up controversy because he won't admit the fact that we're all biased to some degree. Even women in tech are biased against women in tech. I

PG really only stirs up controversy because he won't admit the fact that we're all biased to some degree. Even women in tech are biased against women in tech. It's natural because pattern matching is natural, and female developers & founders are (currently) rare. Women _on average_ may very well be better or worse than men in all sorts of ways, but that doesn't mean some of them won't be extraordinary. We have to be careful about our biases so we don't miss out on the extraordinary ones. It takes extra work to do this. For example orchestras (traditionally very male dominated) tried to remove bias from their auditions by having the musicians play behind a curtain. The curtain increased the probability that a woman would advance from preliminary rounds by 50 percent(!). Bemoaning may be tiresome, but it can also lead to changes that really do make a difference. I wonder if YC applications are gender neutral (names removed)?

einhverfr 13y ago
I think that one of the key challenges though is that speaking is an action not only of expressing an opinion but also furthering an agenda. I think one must understand this link to understand why I think PG is not quite exactly right here. Very often times ideas which stir controversy do so because of a real or perceived agenda behind them. If I say, for example (as I have on HN and gotten flack for) that women tend to be more likely to think in ways which are socially more complex than men, I get flack because there is a fear that anything essentialist about gender (outside of, say, the abortion debate) is essentially a way of trying to imprison women in limiting gender roles. That isn't my intention naturally but I have to accept that this is the framework behind the controversy that saying something like that arises. Similarly if I argue that the natural order is for people to retire with their children, this has huge impacts for modern ideas of sexuality and the choice of childlessness. There are tons of attitudes that I think that I would be cautious (though perhaps I am too foolish to be reluctant) about discussing. But the key issue is the concern about the perceived agendas, and the perceived power structures that come with those. Ideas themselves must exist in a context, and that context is defined in part by how they are used, not only by the person discussing them but also by others.
theorique 13y ago
> I wonder if YC applications are gender neutral (names removed)? That could eliminate unconscious bias during the application screening process, but it would be hard to run face-to-face interviews without revealing the sex of the person doing the interviewing.

einhverfr 13y ago

I think that one of the key challenges though is that speaking is an action not only of expressing an opinion but also furthering an agenda. I think one must understand this link to understand why I think PG is not quite exactly right here. Very often times ideas which stir controversy do so because of a real or perceived agenda behind them. If I say, for example (as I have on HN and gotten flack for) that women tend to be more likely to think in ways which are socially more complex than men, I get flack because there is a fear that anything essentialist about gender (outside of, say, the abortion debate) is essentially a way of trying to imprison women in limiting gender roles. That isn't my intention naturally but I have to accept that this is the framework behind the controversy that saying something like that arises. Similarly if I argue that the natural order is for people to retire with their children, this has huge impacts for modern ideas of sexuality and the choice of childlessness. There are tons of attitudes that I think that I would be cautious (though perhaps I am too foolish to be reluctant) about discussing. But the key issue is the concern about the perceived agendas, and the perceived power structures that come with those. Ideas themselves must exist in a context, and that context is defined in part by how they are used, not only by the person discussing them but also by others.

theorique 13y ago

> I wonder if YC applications are gender neutral (names removed)? That could eliminate unconscious bias during the application screening process, but it would be hard to run face-to-face interviews without revealing the sex of the person doing the interviewing.