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A good example of the debate and tactics I'm describing. :) If you agree that women are not somehow less mentally capable than men, then the fact that technica

by aristus 12y ago

A good example of the debate and tactics I'm describing. :) If you agree that women are not somehow less mentally capable than men, then the fact that technical jobs are 85% dominated by men should be a concern. Not just for "normative" reasons or "statistical equity", but simply that there are a lot of talented people being excluded for one reason or another. If not, you should explain WHY not. Anomalies demand explanation. You dismiss the numbers because of an assumed equality of treatment and saying, well, I don't see anything therefore it's not a problem... and if it is, it's somebody else's problem. That's exactly the mismatch of rigor I'm talking about. You put the burden on others to "prove" that something is amiss, then when they do, demand more.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
Claiming that "a lot of talented people being excluded for one reason or another" is a positive claim. It's merely a fact about the world. If you are against this, that's a normative axiom (or possibly a normative conclusion derived from another normative axiom). As for the undue rigor involved, it's you who seems to be demanding a lot: you demand proof that men and women are statistically unequal merely to admit it as a possibility. More precisely, let A = "women are unequally treated" and B = "women are not statistically equal to men" (at the point of application for Facebook employment). The diversity numbers imply A || B. You are assuming that B is false because there is no proof it is true, and therefore concluding A must be true (since A || B and !B => A). But strangely, you are not asserting that A is false without a rigorous proof that A is true (which would imply B). That's the fundamental asymmetry that Scott Alexander is talking about. The people you disagree with are merely saying "A || B, we don't know which."
- aristus 12y ago
  "We don't know which", and will stop there. That's fine. All I ask is you be explicit about where you stand: on the side of the status quo, not wrapped in the flag of math as you would like pretend, but simply content with the way things are, and utterly incurious about how to change it. [edit] For fuck sake - if you had noticed a 50% imbalance in CPU usage on your server farm, surely you'd spend some time trying to understand it. What the hell is wrong with so many people who are busy inventing facile excuses and dredging up mathy reasons why to NOT recognize the problem as a problem and looking into why it might exist?
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    If I narrowed the source of CPU usage down to this block of code: for { x <- f() y <- g() } yield (x+y) I would not immediately conclude that f() is the source of the problem. That's what you are advocating doing. And if someone suggests g() might be the problem, you are assuming they are wrong and demanding an excess level of rigor from them. That's exactly what Scott Alexander is warning against. [edit: I'm sticking to epistemology. I'm not hijacking the thread to discuss gender.]
    - aristus 12y ago
      Still going on that vein, eh? If you notice a global imbalance in CPU usage, you should be totally focused on understanding the cause, not inventing excuses why g() is not the problem or why people investigating f() are wrong. I frankly don't care whether it's a pipeline problem or a filter problem, or both. I have more than a decade of performance work under my belt; I'm familiar with the usual arguments. What makes me take notice is that so much effort is put into arguing why there isn't a problem at all, or that people who say there is a problem are somehow mistaken. Seriously. Do you think that women are intellectually flawed? Yes or no? If yes, I'd love to hear why. If no, what is your best guess why they are underrepresented? No tricks, no shifting of levels. Why do you think it's so? "I don't know, let's find out together" is a perfectly good answer.
      - zootar 12y ago
        > your best guess why they are underrepresented? Christina Hoff Sommers' guesses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-6usiN4uoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-6usiN4uoA, http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/what-lean-in-misunderstands-about-gender-differences/274138/ http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/what-lean-i...
      - glenra 12y ago
        > Do you think that women are intellectually flawed? [...] If no, what is your best guess why they are underrepresented? My best guess is that relevant male math-type skills have a higher variance than female math-type skills. That means that even if the average ability is about the same, there are more men than women at the very top of the skill distribution and ALSO at the very bottom of the skill distribution. If you look for math morons, you'll find more men; if you look for math geniuses, you'll find more men. If you look for people with roughly average math ability, you'll find more women. If the variance is even a LITTLE larger, it can explain an arbitrarily large imbalance at the high end, and we have both (some) statistical evidence that it IS larger and plausible biological reasons to expect that it MIGHT be larger. Women have two X chromosomes; men only have one. All the important stuff that makes us human is on the X chromosome. So for the sake of intuition, let us imagine that there were only THREE available genes for math ability, all equally prevalent in the population, and any X chromosome you inherit includes one (and only one!) of these three "math ability" genes. The genes are: (1) "moron" (recessive) (2) "genius" (recessive) (3) "average" (dominant) In that world, men would have a 1 in 3 chance of being a genius and women would have a 1 in 9 chance of being a genius. Similarly, men would have a 1 in 3 chance of being a moron and women would have a 1 in 9 chance of being a moron. In that world, having two X chromosomes makes women "more average" than men, which means that if some career requires the "math genius" gene, that career will be 75% male. Does that all make sense? Okay, now let's suppose that "genius" gene is a bit more rare. Let's say that only 10% of X chromosomes have the "potential math genius" gene. In that case, men would outnumber women 10-to-1 instead of 3-to-1 in professions requiring it. The rarer that gene is, so long as that gene is either recessive or to some degree averages out with its counterpart on the other X chromosome, it will be hugely rarer that women fully express the properties that gene codes for. If this analysis is valid, it suggests that women are less likely to be at the very TOP of math-related fields (or will have to work a lot harder to get there) for essentially the same reason women are far less likely than men are to be colorblind. (relevant study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7604277 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7604277 )
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

by aristus 12y ago

yummyfajitas 12y ago

Claiming that "a lot of talented people being excluded for one reason or another" is a positive claim. It's merely a fact about the world. If you are against this, that's a normative axiom (or possibly a normative conclusion derived from another normative axiom). As for the undue rigor involved, it's you who seems to be demanding a lot: you demand proof that men and women are statistically unequal merely to admit it as a possibility. More precisely, let A = "women are unequally treated" and B = "women are not statistically equal to men" (at the point of application for Facebook employment). The diversity numbers imply A || B. You are assuming that B is false because there is no proof it is true, and therefore concluding A must be true (since A || B and !B => A). But strangely, you are not asserting that A is false without a rigorous proof that A is true (which would imply B). That's the fundamental asymmetry that Scott Alexander is talking about. The people you disagree with are merely saying "A || B, we don't know which."

aristus 12y ago
"We don't know which", and will stop there. That's fine. All I ask is you be explicit about where you stand: on the side of the status quo, not wrapped in the flag of math as you would like pretend, but simply content with the way things are, and utterly incurious about how to change it. [edit] For fuck sake - if you had noticed a 50% imbalance in CPU usage on your server farm, surely you'd spend some time trying to understand it. What the hell is wrong with so many people who are busy inventing facile excuses and dredging up mathy reasons why to NOT recognize the problem as a problem and looking into why it might exist?
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  If I narrowed the source of CPU usage down to this block of code: for { x <- f() y <- g() } yield (x+y) I would not immediately conclude that f() is the source of the problem. That's what you are advocating doing. And if someone suggests g() might be the problem, you are assuming they are wrong and demanding an excess level of rigor from them. That's exactly what Scott Alexander is warning against. [edit: I'm sticking to epistemology. I'm not hijacking the thread to discuss gender.]
  - aristus 12y ago
    Still going on that vein, eh? If you notice a global imbalance in CPU usage, you should be totally focused on understanding the cause, not inventing excuses why g() is not the problem or why people investigating f() are wrong. I frankly don't care whether it's a pipeline problem or a filter problem, or both. I have more than a decade of performance work under my belt; I'm familiar with the usual arguments. What makes me take notice is that so much effort is put into arguing why there isn't a problem at all, or that people who say there is a problem are somehow mistaken. Seriously. Do you think that women are intellectually flawed? Yes or no? If yes, I'd love to hear why. If no, what is your best guess why they are underrepresented? No tricks, no shifting of levels. Why do you think it's so? "I don't know, let's find out together" is a perfectly good answer.
    - zootar 12y ago
      > your best guess why they are underrepresented? Christina Hoff Sommers' guesses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-6usiN4uoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-6usiN4uoA, http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/what-lean-in-misunderstands-about-gender-differences/274138/ http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/what-lean-i...
    - glenra 12y ago
      > Do you think that women are intellectually flawed? [...] If no, what is your best guess why they are underrepresented? My best guess is that relevant male math-type skills have a higher variance than female math-type skills. That means that even if the average ability is about the same, there are more men than women at the very top of the skill distribution and ALSO at the very bottom of the skill distribution. If you look for math morons, you'll find more men; if you look for math geniuses, you'll find more men. If you look for people with roughly average math ability, you'll find more women. If the variance is even a LITTLE larger, it can explain an arbitrarily large imbalance at the high end, and we have both (some) statistical evidence that it IS larger and plausible biological reasons to expect that it MIGHT be larger. Women have two X chromosomes; men only have one. All the important stuff that makes us human is on the X chromosome. So for the sake of intuition, let us imagine that there were only THREE available genes for math ability, all equally prevalent in the population, and any X chromosome you inherit includes one (and only one!) of these three "math ability" genes. The genes are: (1) "moron" (recessive) (2) "genius" (recessive) (3) "average" (dominant) In that world, men would have a 1 in 3 chance of being a genius and women would have a 1 in 9 chance of being a genius. Similarly, men would have a 1 in 3 chance of being a moron and women would have a 1 in 9 chance of being a moron. In that world, having two X chromosomes makes women "more average" than men, which means that if some career requires the "math genius" gene, that career will be 75% male. Does that all make sense? Okay, now let's suppose that "genius" gene is a bit more rare. Let's say that only 10% of X chromosomes have the "potential math genius" gene. In that case, men would outnumber women 10-to-1 instead of 3-to-1 in professions requiring it. The rarer that gene is, so long as that gene is either recessive or to some degree averages out with its counterpart on the other X chromosome, it will be hugely rarer that women fully express the properties that gene codes for. If this analysis is valid, it suggests that women are less likely to be at the very TOP of math-related fields (or will have to work a lot harder to get there) for essentially the same reason women are far less likely than men are to be colorblind. (relevant study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7604277 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7604277 )

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]