Someone wrote a blog post reviewing a book by some sociologist named Murray. Never heard of him. Anyway, I couldn’t get through the whole thing because the reviewer has this really obnoxious writing style that uses way too many italics and exclamation points (as well as occasional weirdly out-of-place cuss words?!), but I did notice that he (?) links to Less Wrong a few times, which is something I don’t see “in the wild” very often these days, so I “thought it couldn’t hurt” to share the link here in case one of you happens to find it interesting?? (April 2020, ~11,200 words)
I found interesting the idea that maybe in countries with gender equality, people are comparing themselves against an average human, while in countries with gender inequality, people are comparing themselves against an average member of the same gender. So, if there are visible differences between groups of people (whether those differences are caused by nature or nurture), lower segregation can make those differences more salient.
This reminds me of a similar situation in education. In general, having schools segregated by race or gender, predictably means that some groups will get better education and some will get worse. But still, there is this nice thing about it: In a school for black kids, the student with best grades is always… black. And in a school for girls, the student best in math is always… a girl. The stereotypes locally don’t matter, if there is no one to compare to; and this can be encouraging for people who would be discouraged otherwise. Now put everyone in the same classroom, and everyone gets the same education, but many stop trying after they correctly observe that their group is underrepresented among the winners.
I think you mean occasional weirdly out-of-place fucking cuss words.
Lots of interesting tidbits. Thanks.