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Can you state your theory clearly enough that I can directly apply it? I have no idea what you are trying to say. Make sure to include a clear definition of "po

Can you state your theory clearly enough that I can directly apply it? I have no idea what you are trying to say. Make sure to include a clear definition of "power", and make sure this definition is clear enough that I can at the very least evaluate "more" and "less" power. (I.e., I have no idea why you consider academic physics to have more power than academic biology.) I also have no idea what you mean by "a marginalized group would concentrate its efforts". Are you implying that women don't make individual career choices based on their interest and aptitude, but instead "concentrate [their] efforts" in some sort of collectivist power grab? That's a bit scary. I always thought women were just people like me, making selfish individual decisions to maximize their money/lifestyle/career enjoyment.

pron 11y ago
> Can you state your theory clearly enough that I can directly apply it? Certainly. Non-hegemonic groups are marginalized from seats of power. After a long struggle, they may increase participation. Put another way: groups with more power tend to preserve and increase the power difference between them and less powerful groups, while the less-powerful groups may gain a share of the power after a struggle. Sadly, it's not my theory, but one of the most elementary theories -- backed by countless evidence -- of the social sciences, supported by studies in anthropology, sociology and history (with some backup from social psychology, too). Can you state your theory clearly, or, at the very least, state what evidence compels you to doubt the current scientific consensus? > Make sure to include a clear definition of "power", and make sure this definition is clear enough that I can at the very least evaluate "more" and "less" power. I have done so on numerous occasions in the past in our conversations. Please refer to them or look up "power" on Wikipedia. The short description is influence, and if you'd like a description with a more quantitative "feel", I'd say the power a person has is the number of people they can influence indirectly (i.e. graph reach) summed over the magnitude in the change of behavior they cause in each affected individual. > I.e., I have no idea why you consider academic physics to have more power than academic biology I don't. See my other response to you. > Are you implying that women don't make individual career choices based on their interest and aptitude, but instead "concentrate [their] efforts" in some sort of collectivist power grab? I'm stating the much-observed, well-known fact, that society pushes and directs us in various directions. What we see as "free choice" is, in fact, "free choice under societal pressures and restrictions". That behavior is not collective but individual, only biased. Just like any fair coin is free to make a choice how to land, yet we can make very accurate predictions on the result of a thousand coin tosses. Collective behavior is not always the result of collective decisions. > I always thought women were just people like me, making selfish individual decisions to maximize their money/lifestyle/career enjoyment. All of us make selfish individual decisions, but the (probabilistic) fitness function is largely determined by large-scale, emergent properties of the system. Think of individual particle movement and temperature or of Brownian motion. There are no collective decisions involved -- only individual "decisions" and local interaction -- yet the end result is that global factors heavily influence the distribution in behavior of the individuals. The effect of social influence on personal choice has been heavily studied in social psychology, and, in fact, in zoology too.
- sfk 11y ago
  Seats of power? Any woman can start and maintain an OSS project like xterm. They don't, because it's a thankless task and either they aren't interested enough or they figure out the "thankless" part faster than men.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    >or they figure out the "thankless" part faster than men // Or men figure out the "thankless" part equally quickly but aren't as bothered to receive encouragement from others as the women?
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  You've only provided one clear definition of "power", namely "influences the behavior of others". This is simply a relation. It is not an ordering or a cardinality. Yet you then turn around and use "power" in an ordinal way ("power difference") and sometimes even a cardinal way. The definition you give here almost does that, but how do I assign a number to "magnitude in the change of behavior"? You've not defined a "hegemonic group" either. Anyway, since I can't quite understand your theory, maybe you can clearly state a hypothetical observation which would prove your theory incorrect. That's usually a good way to illustrate what a theory does and does not predict. For example, to disprove my "more math less women" theory, you should find a broad category of similar careers, run linear regression on math content vs % female, and find a flat or upward sloping line. I.e., the same analysis as was done on Scott Alexander's post (see my link), but with the opposite result.
  - pron 11y ago
    > but how do I assign a number to "magnitude in the change of behavior"? You don't. Read what I wrote. > You've not defined a "hegemonic group" either. If you're interested, look it up. I feel a strong sense of deja-vu. > maybe you can clearly state a hypothetical observation which would prove your theory incorrect I think I've done it twice in the past when talking to you, so I'll only provide a short abstract here (and again, it's not my theory but the consensus theory): If groups with power were not to resist social mobility (i.e. for less powerful groups to obtain more power) we'd see a constant shift in power distribution, which would be very fluid, while what we observe is the complete opposite: a very stable power structure that then breaks and gets restructured relatively very rapidly during revolutions that are rare. So the pattern is long periods of stability and then quick changes brought about by some explosive event or a demonstrable pattern of slow power acquisition through many struggles. When it comes to women, the pattern is often the latter (there's a simple explanation for that), but you can see how women gain access to politics, law, medicine etc. only after very long fights against very strong opposition (that invariably cite innate ability as the barrier). > For example, to disprove my "more math less women" theory, you should find a broad category of similar careers, run linear regression on math content vs % female, and find a flat or upward sloping line. I.e., the same analysis as was done on Scott Alexander's post (see my link), but with the opposite result. Two problems with that. First, yours is not a theory but a description. Second, it is not a very relevant one because it doesn't explain the constant change in participation, nor the gender-gap in the software industry. Finally, while "more math less women" may have always held on average, the slope has changed. I don't think anybody minds if the gender distribution in physics is 60-40%, even if that difference is entirely due to innate ability. So your description does not even compete with mine because it doesn't even try to explain the same phenomenon, which is the one we care the most to explain. That has little to do with the 4:1 or even 10:1 difference we see in the software industry.

pron 11y ago

> Can you state your theory clearly enough that I can directly apply it? Certainly. Non-hegemonic groups are marginalized from seats of power. After a long struggle, they may increase participation. Put another way: groups with more power tend to preserve and increase the power difference between them and less powerful groups, while the less-powerful groups may gain a share of the power after a struggle. Sadly, it's not my theory, but one of the most elementary theories -- backed by countless evidence -- of the social sciences, supported by studies in anthropology, sociology and history (with some backup from social psychology, too). Can you state your theory clearly, or, at the very least, state what evidence compels you to doubt the current scientific consensus? > Make sure to include a clear definition of "power", and make sure this definition is clear enough that I can at the very least evaluate "more" and "less" power. I have done so on numerous occasions in the past in our conversations. Please refer to them or look up "power" on Wikipedia. The short description is influence, and if you'd like a description with a more quantitative "feel", I'd say the power a person has is the number of people they can influence indirectly (i.e. graph reach) summed over the magnitude in the change of behavior they cause in each affected individual. > I.e., I have no idea why you consider academic physics to have more power than academic biology I don't. See my other response to you. > Are you implying that women don't make individual career choices based on their interest and aptitude, but instead "concentrate [their] efforts" in some sort of collectivist power grab? I'm stating the much-observed, well-known fact, that society pushes and directs us in various directions. What we see as "free choice" is, in fact, "free choice under societal pressures and restrictions". That behavior is not collective but individual, only biased. Just like any fair coin is free to make a choice how to land, yet we can make very accurate predictions on the result of a thousand coin tosses. Collective behavior is not always the result of collective decisions. > I always thought women were just people like me, making selfish individual decisions to maximize their money/lifestyle/career enjoyment. All of us make selfish individual decisions, but the (probabilistic) fitness function is largely determined by large-scale, emergent properties of the system. Think of individual particle movement and temperature or of Brownian motion. There are no collective decisions involved -- only individual "decisions" and local interaction -- yet the end result is that global factors heavily influence the distribution in behavior of the individuals. The effect of social influence on personal choice has been heavily studied in social psychology, and, in fact, in zoology too.

sfk 11y ago
Seats of power? Any woman can start and maintain an OSS project like xterm. They don't, because it's a thankless task and either they aren't interested enough or they figure out the "thankless" part faster than men.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  >or they figure out the "thankless" part faster than men // Or men figure out the "thankless" part equally quickly but aren't as bothered to receive encouragement from others as the women?
yummyfajitas 11y ago
You've only provided one clear definition of "power", namely "influences the behavior of others". This is simply a relation. It is not an ordering or a cardinality. Yet you then turn around and use "power" in an ordinal way ("power difference") and sometimes even a cardinal way. The definition you give here almost does that, but how do I assign a number to "magnitude in the change of behavior"? You've not defined a "hegemonic group" either. Anyway, since I can't quite understand your theory, maybe you can clearly state a hypothetical observation which would prove your theory incorrect. That's usually a good way to illustrate what a theory does and does not predict. For example, to disprove my "more math less women" theory, you should find a broad category of similar careers, run linear regression on math content vs % female, and find a flat or upward sloping line. I.e., the same analysis as was done on Scott Alexander's post (see my link), but with the opposite result.
- pron 11y ago
  > but how do I assign a number to "magnitude in the change of behavior"? You don't. Read what I wrote. > You've not defined a "hegemonic group" either. If you're interested, look it up. I feel a strong sense of deja-vu. > maybe you can clearly state a hypothetical observation which would prove your theory incorrect I think I've done it twice in the past when talking to you, so I'll only provide a short abstract here (and again, it's not my theory but the consensus theory): If groups with power were not to resist social mobility (i.e. for less powerful groups to obtain more power) we'd see a constant shift in power distribution, which would be very fluid, while what we observe is the complete opposite: a very stable power structure that then breaks and gets restructured relatively very rapidly during revolutions that are rare. So the pattern is long periods of stability and then quick changes brought about by some explosive event or a demonstrable pattern of slow power acquisition through many struggles. When it comes to women, the pattern is often the latter (there's a simple explanation for that), but you can see how women gain access to politics, law, medicine etc. only after very long fights against very strong opposition (that invariably cite innate ability as the barrier). > For example, to disprove my "more math less women" theory, you should find a broad category of similar careers, run linear regression on math content vs % female, and find a flat or upward sloping line. I.e., the same analysis as was done on Scott Alexander's post (see my link), but with the opposite result. Two problems with that. First, yours is not a theory but a description. Second, it is not a very relevant one because it doesn't explain the constant change in participation, nor the gender-gap in the software industry. Finally, while "more math less women" may have always held on average, the slope has changed. I don't think anybody minds if the gender distribution in physics is 60-40%, even if that difference is entirely due to innate ability. So your description does not even compete with mine because it doesn't even try to explain the same phenomenon, which is the one we care the most to explain. That has little to do with the 4:1 or even 10:1 difference we see in the software industry.