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This is a good post to begin with but then the author shoots himself in the foot with claims like "A couple of weeks ago I pointed out Sam Altman making bogus

This is a good post to begin with but then the author shoots himself in the foot with claims like "A couple of weeks ago I pointed out Sam Altman making bogus arguments about sexism - arguing by juxtuposition that the existence of sexism reduces the number of women in technology." I think the fact that sexism reduces the desire of women to participate in something is established. It doesn't make sense to dismiss this as an 'argument by juxtaposition' since scientific thought begins with drawing new guesses from established patterns, particularly when the data are found wanting. So now, reading between the lines, we have the dual inference that 1) the author doesn't understand his own argument, and 2) the author has a reactionary axe to grind regarding gender issues in technology. Whether or not these inferences are true (I don't think they are), a large audience is now lost since most people are socially aware enough to understand that 'sexism doesn't repel women' is a poor null hypothesis, even if they can't articulate these feelings in the language of science.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
Author here. Altman provided no argument whatsoever in his post that the existence of a sexist act is the cause of women's underrepresentation in tech. He was fairly careful - he didn't even explicitly state causality, he merely implied it. Maybe an argument is out there somewhere, but not in Altman's post. I think the fact that sexism reduces the desire of women to participate in something is established. Directionally, maybe, but I've seen little evidence the magnitude is significant. In spite of the built in sexism, Catholicism and Islam both have far more women than Atheism (or technology). I don't see any reason to believe medicine or law are less sexist than tech, or were less sexist back when women started flooding into those fields. If you have evidence of correlation, link to it - Sam Altman didn't. I do have a "reactionary axe" to grind against bad reasoning and this particular topic is a huge source of bad reasoning.
- cynicalkane 12y ago
  > In spite of the built in sexism, Catholicism and Islam both have far more women than Atheism Let's break down what's bad about this sentence. It contains: * a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the sexism we're talking about. A woman who walks into a church will not be constantly devalued for her gender and/or treated like a hot piece instead of a colleague, while simultaneously having their feelings devalued with neckbeardy thought-terminating "rationalism". In technology and business, sexism isn't an abstract teaching most people ignore, it's something in the air. * At least two of the statistical fallacies you just decried. * The 'appeal to worse problems' fallacy, and * the hidden assumption that women's participation in religion is comparable to their choice of careers, as though they 'join' the Catholic Church or Islam the same way one might join a technology company.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Yeah 'something in the air'. What does that mean? That some people (many women) don't like the culture of technology. That's not sexism; that's just a fact. E.g. Some people (many women) don't like hunting - does that make it sexist?
    - DanBC 12y ago
      You risk losing money and market share if you think like that. If you make smaller guns and if you make guns in a range of colours and you make nice clothing you then open up the market beyond its current range. The people currently hunting make dislike a powder blue rifle and may scoff at comfy footwear, but you don't care because you're not selling to those people, you're selling to the peple who are not traditionally hunters.
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Excellent observation. But still not sexism. Its gotten popular to use blaming language, paint everything with the sexism brush, and generally polarize discussions about workplaces. I don't think that helps get us anywhere. If only more folks thought like you.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      No, hunting isn't "sexist", it's gender biased. "Sexist" is a normative term. It's easy to see where the gender bias comes from: most hunters come to the sport via their fathers, and hunting as a father-son tradition is deeply ingrained in the culture. There are, despite that, plenty of women hunters. That's the case with hunting. But it's hard to extrapolate from hunting to technology jobs.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    In your first bullet point, you are stating a very detailed theory - near as I can tell, A && B && C => low representation (where A is a particular sort of sexism, B is low status men being rational, etc). That's not what Altman did, nor did he provide evidence for that theory or any other. The "appeal to worse problems" is not a fallacy - I'm advocating searching for examples which vary the inputs. That will allow you to actually measure correlation - if inputs and outputs vary together, you've got correlation. If they don't, you've got nothing.
spindritf 12y ago
the fact that sexism reduces the desire of women to participate in something is established Yeah, I thought so about the influence of parenting on children's outcomes. Then I started reading things like the linked JayMan's article[1] and now I'm not so sure. There probably is some influence but it's quickly starting to look pretty insignificant compared to genetics and just... randomness, luck. Same with psychiatric drugs. Knowing nothing about psychiatry, I used to think they're really good because they're prescribed by doctors and my experience with drugs (painkillers and antibiotics) was that drugs are like miracles on demand. Only crazy people would go off them! Then I started reading articles by psychiatrists and learned that many of very popular medication help one person in 20 after months of taking, if anyone at all ever. Or that antidepressants may actually increase your chances of offing yourself. The moment you start digging anywhere outside of massive successes (antibiotics) and physics (where important research is usually 5 sigma solid, though even then...), things look nowhere near as clear cut as we're told in school or by the media. And yes, sometimes "how do you know?" is just a cop out. But lately I have been taking that seriously, how do I know? I blame the less wrong crowd abandoning their site and spreading doubt thoughtout the Internet. [1] http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/beware-armchair-psychoanalysis/ http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/beware-armchair-psyc...
davidgerard 12y ago
The Wikipedia term for an article like this is a coatrack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Coatrack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Coatrack
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Check his comments, you'll find a healthy dose of (2).
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Could you link to them? I'm curious what is now considered "reactionary".
parennoob 12y ago
> I think the fact that sexism reduces the desire of women to participate in something is established. Nope, I can send you videos from several hip-hop concerts that strongly contradict this statement. I wouldn't though, because that would be an isolated example, taken out of context. I would, however, like to see if, for example – there are other fields which in which women participate a lot despite them being more sexist. 'yummyfajitas mentioned some examples and it would be interesting to ask people in them, "What makes you go into this field despite it having an atmosphere that we in the tech field might describe as being sexist?", and learn something from them. As people who would preferably like to see carefully constructed arguments starting from first principles, statements like "oh, of course, something is established, so someone who is questioning the statement has an axe to grind" give off a petulant, uncompromising vibe, and should, in my opinion, be avoided. Broadening our horizons a bit as to how people behave in different circumstances might give us some new insights into increasing female participation in tech. > Most people are socially aware enough to understand that 'sexism doesn't repel women' is a poor null hypothesis I would like to replace "most people" here with "people in cynicalkane's particular socio-economic milieu". Again, this takes the form of "It is obvious that...", and should be avoided if we want a nuanced, carefully discussed argument about the fairly broad umbrella of sexism.
thanatropism 12y ago
> I think the fact that sexism reduces the desire of women to participate in something is established. [citation needed]

yummyfajitas 12y ago

Author here. Altman provided no argument whatsoever in his post that the existence of a sexist act is the cause of women's underrepresentation in tech. He was fairly careful - he didn't even explicitly state causality, he merely implied it. Maybe an argument is out there somewhere, but not in Altman's post. I think the fact that sexism reduces the desire of women to participate in something is established. Directionally, maybe, but I've seen little evidence the magnitude is significant. In spite of the built in sexism, Catholicism and Islam both have far more women than Atheism (or technology). I don't see any reason to believe medicine or law are less sexist than tech, or were less sexist back when women started flooding into those fields. If you have evidence of correlation, link to it - Sam Altman didn't. I do have a "reactionary axe" to grind against bad reasoning and this particular topic is a huge source of bad reasoning.

cynicalkane 12y ago
> In spite of the built in sexism, Catholicism and Islam both have far more women than Atheism Let's break down what's bad about this sentence. It contains: * a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the sexism we're talking about. A woman who walks into a church will not be constantly devalued for her gender and/or treated like a hot piece instead of a colleague, while simultaneously having their feelings devalued with neckbeardy thought-terminating "rationalism". In technology and business, sexism isn't an abstract teaching most people ignore, it's something in the air. * At least two of the statistical fallacies you just decried. * The 'appeal to worse problems' fallacy, and * the hidden assumption that women's participation in religion is comparable to their choice of careers, as though they 'join' the Catholic Church or Islam the same way one might join a technology company.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Yeah 'something in the air'. What does that mean? That some people (many women) don't like the culture of technology. That's not sexism; that's just a fact. E.g. Some people (many women) don't like hunting - does that make it sexist?
  - DanBC 12y ago
    You risk losing money and market share if you think like that. If you make smaller guns and if you make guns in a range of colours and you make nice clothing you then open up the market beyond its current range. The people currently hunting make dislike a powder blue rifle and may scoff at comfy footwear, but you don't care because you're not selling to those people, you're selling to the peple who are not traditionally hunters.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Excellent observation. But still not sexism. Its gotten popular to use blaming language, paint everything with the sexism brush, and generally polarize discussions about workplaces. I don't think that helps get us anywhere. If only more folks thought like you.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    No, hunting isn't "sexist", it's gender biased. "Sexist" is a normative term. It's easy to see where the gender bias comes from: most hunters come to the sport via their fathers, and hunting as a father-son tradition is deeply ingrained in the culture. There are, despite that, plenty of women hunters. That's the case with hunting. But it's hard to extrapolate from hunting to technology jobs.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  In your first bullet point, you are stating a very detailed theory - near as I can tell, A && B && C => low representation (where A is a particular sort of sexism, B is low status men being rational, etc). That's not what Altman did, nor did he provide evidence for that theory or any other. The "appeal to worse problems" is not a fallacy - I'm advocating searching for examples which vary the inputs. That will allow you to actually measure correlation - if inputs and outputs vary together, you've got correlation. If they don't, you've got nothing.

spindritf 12y ago

the fact that sexism reduces the desire of women to participate in something is established Yeah, I thought so about the influence of parenting on children's outcomes. Then I started reading things like the linked JayMan's article[1] and now I'm not so sure. There probably is some influence but it's quickly starting to look pretty insignificant compared to genetics and just... randomness, luck. Same with psychiatric drugs. Knowing nothing about psychiatry, I used to think they're really good because they're prescribed by doctors and my experience with drugs (painkillers and antibiotics) was that drugs are like miracles on demand. Only crazy people would go off them! Then I started reading articles by psychiatrists and learned that many of very popular medication help one person in 20 after months of taking, if anyone at all ever. Or that antidepressants may actually increase your chances of offing yourself. The moment you start digging anywhere outside of massive successes (antibiotics) and physics (where important research is usually 5 sigma solid, though even then...), things look nowhere near as clear cut as we're told in school or by the media. And yes, sometimes "how do you know?" is just a cop out. But lately I have been taking that seriously, how do I know? I blame the less wrong crowd abandoning their site and spreading doubt thoughtout the Internet. [1] http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/beware-armchair-psychoanalysis/ http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/beware-armchair-psyc...

davidgerard 12y ago

The Wikipedia term for an article like this is a coatrack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Coatrack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Coatrack

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

Check his comments, you'll find a healthy dose of (2).

yummyfajitas 12y ago
Could you link to them? I'm curious what is now considered "reactionary".

parennoob 12y ago

> I think the fact that sexism reduces the desire of women to participate in something is established. Nope, I can send you videos from several hip-hop concerts that strongly contradict this statement. I wouldn't though, because that would be an isolated example, taken out of context. I would, however, like to see if, for example – there are other fields which in which women participate a lot despite them being more sexist. 'yummyfajitas mentioned some examples and it would be interesting to ask people in them, "What makes you go into this field despite it having an atmosphere that we in the tech field might describe as being sexist?", and learn something from them. As people who would preferably like to see carefully constructed arguments starting from first principles, statements like "oh, of course, something is established, so someone who is questioning the statement has an axe to grind" give off a petulant, uncompromising vibe, and should, in my opinion, be avoided. Broadening our horizons a bit as to how people behave in different circumstances might give us some new insights into increasing female participation in tech. > Most people are socially aware enough to understand that 'sexism doesn't repel women' is a poor null hypothesis I would like to replace "most people" here with "people in cynicalkane's particular socio-economic milieu". Again, this takes the form of "It is obvious that...", and should be avoided if we want a nuanced, carefully discussed argument about the fairly broad umbrella of sexism.

thanatropism 12y ago

> I think the fact that sexism reduces the desire of women to participate in something is established. [citation needed]