I often catch myself thinking that a slow timid driver in front of me is “probably a woman”. Which is the case probably 80% of the time or more, when I get to check this assumption. I am also surprised when an aggressive driver behind me ends up being a female when I see them swerving past through the parking lane. Does this stereotyping make me sexist? Or just not blind to the realities of local driving? If this is a bias, which one is it?
Which is the case probably 80% of the time or more, when I get to check this assumption. (...) If this is a bias, which one is it?
Acknowledging a mostly accurate predictor is not a bias. If that makes you “sexist”, but also makes you more correct, then so be it. Or are we supposed to erase parts of our map for societal taboo reasons?
Observing that slow timid drivers are female is Bayesian evidence that slow timid drivers tend to be female. Observing that a group of people says things like “slow timid drivers tend to be female” is also Bayesian evidence that this group has misogynist tendencies. You don’t have to erase parts of your map, but you also don’t have to loudly describe parts of your map to everyone else in the car. This is another reason I agree with Michael Vassar that rationalists should be more comfortable with lying (at least by omission).
This is another reason I agree with Michael Vassar that rationalists should be more comfortable with lying (at least by omission).
I think rationalists should be more comfortable with the idea that not all conversations are truth seeking. However, I don’t think we should be holding non-truthseeking discussions on LW because it poisons the point of this forum. Furthermore, while it is possible to be more or less tactful about truth seeking, truth seeking isn’t compatible with what I think your suggesting for this conversation. I think LW as a forum should generally be willing to be truth-seeking even if the discussion and/or truth unpleasant to some people. I also think that when the cost of having a public truth seeking discussion is to high people should just not talk about it on LW, and should make the existence of this filter as well known to participants as is practically possible (see the policy on violence towards identifiable people for a decent example).
I guess joke threads are ok in that they are clearly not about serious discussion.
Our disagreement (or possibly my misreading of your position) lies in scope/the definition of discussion. I think that you’re objecting to shminux and Kawoomba discussing the topic of true and/or rationality arrived at propositions that are likely to offend some people (or perhaps just that shminux gave an object level example rather than sticking to the meta-level), but are not suggesting that we shouldn’t discuss gender politics on LW. While I can kinda see the object vs. meta concern I think that the topic is something that should be allowed, even encouraged if we’re going to talk gender at all (for reference I’m unsure wether or not we should be having the general gender discussion on LW).
I’m not objecting to them discussing the topic, I’m pointing out the (weak) signaling implications of them discussing the topic. Policy debates should not appear one-sided and so forth.
rationalists should be more comfortable with lying (at least by omission).
I agree; believing p doesn’t mean you have to tell everyone that p. However, this is made more difficult when other people in the car go around saying “not p, not p!” a lot.
I suppose you could attempt a meta-level argument against the social norm against saying “p”, but this is unlikely to be effective against the worry that just saying “p” is bayesian evidence you’re an evil person.
If I asked you to solve “2+2=x” for x and you answered “4″, that would be Bayesian evidence that you know how to do simple arithmetic.
It is also Bayesian evidence that you answer “4” whenever asked for number. It is even Bayesian evidence that you only ever say the word “four”, period.
See how these are not all equal? When an observation you make is correct, that very much lowers the additional probability that you are a misogynist, compared to if your observation had been incorrect.
You could say “well, why make the observation?” to which I’d reply “Because you’re an attentive chap, and you’re in a car and observing regularities in your environment. Other people are interesting, and their gender cannot not be seen when looking into other cars.”
you also don’t have to loudly describe parts of your map to everyone else in the car
If I ferried the kind of passengers who would appreciate pointing out a certain interesting geometric pattern of trees by the wayside, I wouldn’t want to treat observations about the identity of other drivers and how that predicts their behavior any differently.
edit: Can’t we just call the territory/reality misogynist in such cases, and when called out correctly say “I’m sorry reality offends you, ma’am.” :-)
I am female, and it’s taken me years to come to terms with the fact that reality probably does has a gender bias, and that some intellectual differences between men and women are likely to have a biological basis. It is really unfair and really difficult to deal with the fact that (on average) being born female means one is less likely to be good at certain things.
Saying “I’m sorry reality offends you ma’am” sounds snide to me, and I don’t think it would help anyone accept painful truths about gender differences.
Actually, I think that your analogy is apt. The only difference is that the priors on “someone says “four” whenever asked for a number” and “someone only says the word “four” are really low and the prior for “someone has some misogynist beliefs” is much higher.
(Note that I am definitely not saying that shminux is a misogynist.)
See how these are not all equal? When an observation you make is correct, that very much lowers the additional probability that you are a misogynist, compared to if your observation had been incorrect.
Disagree; part of what is being updated on is the fact that shminux decided to make the observation at all. Also, a typical female outside observer looking at the LW community is not going to know that an observation like shminux’s is correct (if indeed it is correct; as another commenter pointed out, there’s an obvious possible issue with confirmation bias here). What she might instead do is take the outside view about what kind of attitude towards gender produces observations like shminux’s (and then upvotes them six times).
You could say “well, why make the observation?” to which I’d reply “Because you’re an attentive chap, and you’re in a car and observing regularities in your environment. Other people are interesting, and their gender cannot not be seen when looking into other cars.”
Yes, but a typical female outside observer looking at the LW community does not know that about you, and moreover may not trust that your introspection about this issue is reliable.
If I ferried the kind of passengers who would appreciate pointing out a certain interesting geometric pattern of trees by the wayside, I wouldn’t want to treat observations about the identity of other drivers and how that predicts their behavior any differently.
The point I’m making is not about what inferences you would draw, it is about what inferences a typical female outside observer would draw.
edit: Can’t we just call the territory/reality misogynist in such cases, and when called out correctly say “I’m sorry reality offends you, ma’am.” :-)
I’m not calling the territory misogynist. I’m calling shminux’s decision to look at and then say that he’s looking at a particular part of the territory (weak) Bayesian evidence of misogyny. I would also call your decision to use the phrase “I’m sorry reality offends you, ma’am” (stronger) Bayesian evidence of misogyny.
It looks like we’re not in the same boat, I’m not arguing about perceptions of a typical female outside observer looking at the LW community, I’m answering shminux’
Does this stereotyping make me sexist? (...) If this is a bias, which one is it?
What’s the goal here? Instrumentally, “how do we give new people of group X the fuzziest feelings when encountering this website?” We’re both in agreement on a lot of proposals then, probably.
Or is it “does making this observation—whether internally or externally—constitute a bias?”, in which case the answer is “no” in the same sense as it is “no” to “Qiaochu_Yuan’s first word in a comment is seemingly always ‘Observing’ or ‘Disagree;’”
edit:
(if indeed it is correct; as another commenter pointed out, there’s an obvious possible issue with confirmation bias here)
No there is not, he said “which is the case probably 80% of the time or more, when I get to check this assumption.” Unless you think he forgets the times his assumption turned out wrong, which is quite uncharitable.
Making this observation constitutes weak evidence of a bias (namely male privilege), and it is easier for a typical female outside observer to see this than for you or shminux.
Unless you think he forgets the times his assumption turned out wrong, which is quite uncharitable.
Making this observation constitutes weak evidence of a bias (namely male privilege), and it is easier for a typical female outside observer to see this than for you or shminux.
Male privilege? Wait what?
I’d be delighted if someone could explain to me how it’s even in the hypothesis that schminux could be considering himself privileged or having some sort of advantage for making or that lets him make the observation “slow/cautious drivers are 80%/mostly female”.
Sure the selection of that particular observation and gender as the category of all things seems odd and is evidence of something about the observer’s thoughts on gender, with a slight tinge of evidence that the observer might have more negative opinions specifically on the female gender because the observation is made against them, but… privilege? Wha...? Where does the above lead to male privilege?
I feel like this whole thread also somewhat derailed. I notice schminux originally didn’t say he makes the observation aloud, only that he observes and thinks. Now the claim is apparently that he says this in public and that typical outside female observers immediately run this through misogyny filters and take it as evidence of gender bias? I’d be tempted to first think that the typical female observer is clearly the more biased and in-the-wrong one here, not to mention that schminux probably wasn’t talking about announcing statistical gender differences in public as The Truth to all Unbelievers so that typical unspecific gender observers can spin it however they want. A question was made with a tentative, low-confidence claim, to LessWrong. Not the Daily Opinions Column.
Also, base rate your typical observers. To the typical male observer, this conversation isn’t what we’re all doing here. To the typical male observer, “LOLOLOL YALL ARE CRAZY BITCHEZ STOP BEIN FAGS IMA GO GET A BEER”… but is that the kind of people we’re looking for? The kind that go “lololol bitchez” or “such a bunch of jerks, all patriarchy-infested egocentric pretenders” at the first sight of any discussion on LessWrong that is even partially about gender differences?
I’d be delighted if someone could explain to me how it’s even in the hypothesis that schminux could be considering himself privileged or having some sort of advantage for making or that lets him make the observation “slow/cautious drivers are 80%/mostly female”.
Sure. Take the outside view. Male commenters on the internet have some distribution of attitudes towards gender. Some of those attitudes are more or less likely to lead to comments like “most slow drivers are female.” One of those attitudes (simplifying considerably) is having and being unaware of male privilege, call it M. A comment C on the internet is Bayesian evidence for M if and only if M-commenters are more likely to make comments like C than non-M commenters. My claim is that a comment like shminux’s is more likely to come from someone who has and is unaware of their male privilege than from someone who is at least aware of their male privilege.
In this particular case, you have inside view reasons to believe that shminux’s statement was generated via some other process than the one I’m suggesting that shminux’s statement provides weak evidence for (emphasis on the weak). There’s no contradiction here.
Forget what I said about the typical outside female observer. The point of that device was to 1) enforce outside view and 2) make gender issues more salient.
I notice schminux originally didn’t say he makes the observation aloud, only that he observes and thinks. Now the claim is apparently that he says this in public
He did say it in public. It’s right here on LessWrong.
It’s now obvious to me that the outside viewer does see P(M|C) > P(M|¬C), and why.
However, what schminux gave is not C, but R(C) + Q, and to any attentive reader I assume that P(M|R(C)+Q+C) < P(M|¬C) < P(M) < P(M|C); where R(C) is a meta-observation about one’s own (past?) observations/comments C¹ , and Q is a question about the evidence carried by C and R(C).
Any external reader who misses this is, as far as I can tell, simply wrong. They were most likely themselves taken by confirmation bias or some other undesirable effect.
Confirmation bias among self-proclaimed feminists is actually something I have a rather high prior for, since they train themselves to see gender bias everywhere in many cases.
(and R(C) does include C as a component once unwrapped, but for clarity I added C in the chain above; assume appropriate anti-double-counting measures are taken)
Would I be a misogynist (or a gynophile) if I pointed out that (for cultural and other reasons) many women fare better in social situations? Would you dispute any such difference, or would you assume some sort of hidden agenda whenever such a difference is stated?
Miso this, miso that, miserere more like.
Given the differences (on average) between gender groups, for nearly any given topic it would be highly unexpected for the distribution to be strictly uniform. Same applies for different age groups.
Is me saying that ‘bad’?
(I would have a similarly strong reaction if discussions about, say, foresting strategies, were overlain with highly charged political terms.)
Would I be a misogynist (or a gynophile) if I pointed out that (for cultural and other reasons) many women fare better in social situations? Would you dispute any such difference, or would you assume some sort of hidden agenda whenever such a difference is stated?
Essentially, gender discussions are constructed to penalize half of the discussion. That’s pretty much exactly why I file gender discussion as a strictly political issue; it’s built on an us-versus-them dynamic.
Doesn’t matter what gender you are. I didn’t say half the participants, I said half the discussion. The us-versus-them isn’t constructed on gender lines, but ideological lines.
And the half which you just explicitly stated you penalize (however weakly), and which I broadly see penalized in the majority of gender discussions.
I have always subconsciously assumed that you are male, probably based on the overall LW gender distribution. Unfortunately I have no intuitions relating gender to Chinese names.
Essentially, gender discussions are constructed to penalize half of the discussion. That’s pretty much exactly why I file gender discussion as a strictly political issue
In most of my social circles, gender discussions are the most in your face examples of arguments as soldiers. Knowing that politics is the mind-killer, I usually keep my mouth shut.
You could say “well, why make the observation?” to which I’d reply “Because you’re an attentive chap, and you’re in a car and observing regularities in your environment. Other people are interesting, and their gender cannot not be seen when looking into other cars.”
“Why make that observation?” is a bad question. Whether or not you have a reason that morally justifies you to make that observation has little to do with the issue of whether making that observation and telling other people about it, correlates with having misogynist tendencies.
You can measure misogynist tendencies with an implicit association tests. Misogynist tendencies are something real that you can measure in the lab.
The test doesn’t care about whether you can provide some intellectual justification for your observations.
You can measure misogynist tendencies with an implicit association tests. Misogynist tendencies are something real that you can measure in the lab. The test doesn’t care about whether you can provide some intellectual justification for your observations.
So by that definition it’s perfectly possible for lack of “misogynist tendencies” to constitute a bias.
If you’re actually right eighty percent of the time, it merely makes you accurate—but beware of confirmation and hindsight bias here. I’m not sure I’d trust that kind of impression unless I’d asked someone to take notes for me or set up some kind of automated process; too many chances for things to go wrong otherwise.
When I’ve found myself being annoyed by slow and timid drivers I don’t recall having any particular thoughts about their gender, but I have often thought that they’re probably old. Which I also feel is confirmed more often than not—but I’ll be the first to admit that I might harbor some irrationalities regarding the elderly, and I think the priors are probably against me here. But it certainly fits the cultural script!
and I think the priors are probably against me here
How so? It would be strange if there were no difference between “driving habits of the elderly” versus the non-elderly. Given how strongly these groups differ in all sorts of biological / sociological / cultural characteristics.
Oh, I’m sure there are some differences in driving habits. The question is whether those differences in habits are large enough to overwhelm the differences in base rate, and I’d expect to see a lot more young to middle-aged people on the road than elderly people—particularly in the rush-hour traffic where I was putting in most of my driving hours.
I didn’t feel that there were disproportionate numbers of slow and timid elderly drivers, after all, I felt that a randomly selected slow, timid driver was probably elderly—and I’d take a bet that that isn’t objectively the case, contrary to my subjective impressions.
Which is the case probably 80% of the time or more, when I get to check this assumption.
How well do you know that’s 80%? If you would now commit to writing down the next 100 results of such guesses, how confident (what p value) would you be that between 70 and 90 times it’s a woman?
You know, I was actually wondering that myself, and I’ve been thinking about it often since I posted that. But it certainly feels a lot less sexist to me. Something about that word ‘timid’ just bugged me. Maybe it’s just that it hits a bit close to home; I’m a woman, and I don’t drive, but I am a timid/cautious bicycle-rider...
It’s less offensive; that’s not the same as less sexist. The short-winded explanation of why is that it’s pretty much the same as saying men are incautious.
You may not use sexism as synonymous with offensive to women, but whether or not something is offensive to women is a significant part of how many people decide to apply the label sexist. Thus, there are reasonable definitions of sexist such that something that is less offensive to the average women is less sexist that an otherwise comparable statement.
I can find no google hits for this term so it would be helpful if you can explain what you mean. Meanwhile, I see no problem with pointing out that you’re trying to impose a normative definition that is not representative of how I routinely see the term used IRL.
It’s not a term, although I guess I can see where the confusion might arise.
Begging the question is assuming the thing you ought to be proving; I was using begging to refer shorthand to this fallacy. Using “sexist” to describe things that are offensive to women is begging the question for the connotation that is applied by the use of the word; it doesn’t particularly matter if that’s how the word is frequently used, if frequently used in that way, it’s frequently used in a dishonest and dark-artsy manner.
The connotations of the word sexism are driven by its meaning, not its use. If we want to use sexism to refer to things which are merely offensive to women, and not discriminatory against women, then sure, we can do that. But we cannot then pretend that the word has the same gravitas; it ceases to be usefully indicative of any sort of injustice, intellectual or otherwise, and becomes instead a signal for personal preference, a considerable drop in connotative power.
But we cannot then pretend that the word has the same gravitas
I was not making doing so. I was making a statement about how the word sexist is actually used, and to a lesser extent how it is practical to use sexist ( in my experience when people say they they’re concerned about offending women and/social consequences that are strongly correlated with offending women). I thought this was clear from the post and the general context of how LW usually handles discussions about language. Furthermore, I don’t believe that your op or first response make it remotely clear that you have any justification beyond attempting connotation begging of your own to enforce a narrow normative definition of a broadly used term.
I typed this much because I unilaterally ending conversations when the participants don’t yet understand each other to be rude. However, now that (I think) we understand what the other is saying I don’t think this conversation is worth continuing, and my lack of counterargument should not be taken as agreement(or disagreement) with what (I think) you are claiming.
The LW rules on discussions about language aren’t “Don’t have them.” They’re, essentially, to have arguments about language when they clarify things, not when they confuse things.
We should all strive to use the best and most accurate stereotypes and avoid inaccurate ones. A stereotype after all is a just a heuristic applied to humans.
I often catch myself thinking that a slow timid driver in front of me is “probably a woman”. Which is the case probably 80% of the time or more, when I get to check this assumption. I am also surprised when an aggressive driver behind me ends up being a female when I see them swerving past through the parking lane. Does this stereotyping make me sexist? Or just not blind to the realities of local driving? If this is a bias, which one is it?
Acknowledging a mostly accurate predictor is not a bias. If that makes you “sexist”, but also makes you more correct, then so be it. Or are we supposed to erase parts of our map for societal taboo reasons?
Observing that slow timid drivers are female is Bayesian evidence that slow timid drivers tend to be female. Observing that a group of people says things like “slow timid drivers tend to be female” is also Bayesian evidence that this group has misogynist tendencies. You don’t have to erase parts of your map, but you also don’t have to loudly describe parts of your map to everyone else in the car. This is another reason I agree with Michael Vassar that rationalists should be more comfortable with lying (at least by omission).
I think rationalists should be more comfortable with the idea that not all conversations are truth seeking. However, I don’t think we should be holding non-truthseeking discussions on LW because it poisons the point of this forum. Furthermore, while it is possible to be more or less tactful about truth seeking, truth seeking isn’t compatible with what I think your suggesting for this conversation. I think LW as a forum should generally be willing to be truth-seeking even if the discussion and/or truth unpleasant to some people. I also think that when the cost of having a public truth seeking discussion is to high people should just not talk about it on LW, and should make the existence of this filter as well known to participants as is practically possible (see the policy on violence towards identifiable people for a decent example). I guess joke threads are ok in that they are clearly not about serious discussion.
I also think this. What did you think I was suggesting instead?
Our disagreement (or possibly my misreading of your position) lies in scope/the definition of discussion. I think that you’re objecting to shminux and Kawoomba discussing the topic of true and/or rationality arrived at propositions that are likely to offend some people (or perhaps just that shminux gave an object level example rather than sticking to the meta-level), but are not suggesting that we shouldn’t discuss gender politics on LW. While I can kinda see the object vs. meta concern I think that the topic is something that should be allowed, even encouraged if we’re going to talk gender at all (for reference I’m unsure wether or not we should be having the general gender discussion on LW).
Edit forgot to add link.
I’m not objecting to them discussing the topic, I’m pointing out the (weak) signaling implications of them discussing the topic. Policy debates should not appear one-sided and so forth.
oic For reference,
is what made it sound like an objection.
I agree; believing p doesn’t mean you have to tell everyone that p. However, this is made more difficult when other people in the car go around saying “not p, not p!” a lot.
I suppose you could attempt a meta-level argument against the social norm against saying “p”, but this is unlikely to be effective against the worry that just saying “p” is bayesian evidence you’re an evil person.
If I asked you to solve “2+2=x” for x and you answered “4″, that would be Bayesian evidence that you know how to do simple arithmetic.
It is also Bayesian evidence that you answer “4” whenever asked for number. It is even Bayesian evidence that you only ever say the word “four”, period.
See how these are not all equal? When an observation you make is correct, that very much lowers the additional probability that you are a misogynist, compared to if your observation had been incorrect.
You could say “well, why make the observation?” to which I’d reply “Because you’re an attentive chap, and you’re in a car and observing regularities in your environment. Other people are interesting, and their gender cannot not be seen when looking into other cars.”
If I ferried the kind of passengers who would appreciate pointing out a certain interesting geometric pattern of trees by the wayside, I wouldn’t want to treat observations about the identity of other drivers and how that predicts their behavior any differently.
edit: Can’t we just call the territory/reality misogynist in such cases, and when called out correctly say “I’m sorry reality offends you, ma’am.” :-)
I am female, and it’s taken me years to come to terms with the fact that reality probably does has a gender bias, and that some intellectual differences between men and women are likely to have a biological basis. It is really unfair and really difficult to deal with the fact that (on average) being born female means one is less likely to be good at certain things.
Saying “I’m sorry reality offends you ma’am” sounds snide to me, and I don’t think it would help anyone accept painful truths about gender differences.
Upvoted for “reality probably has a gender bias”. :-)
We could certainly do that, but I think that would be rather counter to the goal of building a correct map while not incurring avoidable social costs.
Actually, I think that your analogy is apt. The only difference is that the priors on “someone says “four” whenever asked for a number” and “someone only says the word “four” are really low and the prior for “someone has some misogynist beliefs” is much higher.
(Note that I am definitely not saying that shminux is a misogynist.)
Disagree; part of what is being updated on is the fact that shminux decided to make the observation at all. Also, a typical female outside observer looking at the LW community is not going to know that an observation like shminux’s is correct (if indeed it is correct; as another commenter pointed out, there’s an obvious possible issue with confirmation bias here). What she might instead do is take the outside view about what kind of attitude towards gender produces observations like shminux’s (and then upvotes them six times).
Yes, but a typical female outside observer looking at the LW community does not know that about you, and moreover may not trust that your introspection about this issue is reliable.
The point I’m making is not about what inferences you would draw, it is about what inferences a typical female outside observer would draw.
I’m not calling the territory misogynist. I’m calling shminux’s decision to look at and then say that he’s looking at a particular part of the territory (weak) Bayesian evidence of misogyny. I would also call your decision to use the phrase “I’m sorry reality offends you, ma’am” (stronger) Bayesian evidence of misogyny.
It looks like we’re not in the same boat, I’m not arguing about perceptions of a typical female outside observer looking at the LW community, I’m answering shminux’
What’s the goal here? Instrumentally, “how do we give new people of group X the fuzziest feelings when encountering this website?” We’re both in agreement on a lot of proposals then, probably.
Or is it “does making this observation—whether internally or externally—constitute a bias?”, in which case the answer is “no” in the same sense as it is “no” to “Qiaochu_Yuan’s first word in a comment is seemingly always ‘Observing’ or ‘Disagree;’”
edit:
No there is not, he said “which is the case probably 80% of the time or more, when I get to check this assumption.” Unless you think he forgets the times his assumption turned out wrong, which is quite uncharitable.
Making this observation constitutes weak evidence of a bias (namely male privilege), and it is easier for a typical female outside observer to see this than for you or shminux.
Yes, I think this, or at least I think it’s a hypothesis worth entertaining. This is absolutely a part of confirmation bias.
Male privilege? Wait what?
I’d be delighted if someone could explain to me how it’s even in the hypothesis that schminux could be considering himself privileged or having some sort of advantage for making or that lets him make the observation “slow/cautious drivers are 80%/mostly female”.
Sure the selection of that particular observation and gender as the category of all things seems odd and is evidence of something about the observer’s thoughts on gender, with a slight tinge of evidence that the observer might have more negative opinions specifically on the female gender because the observation is made against them, but… privilege? Wha...? Where does the above lead to male privilege?
I feel like this whole thread also somewhat derailed. I notice schminux originally didn’t say he makes the observation aloud, only that he observes and thinks. Now the claim is apparently that he says this in public and that typical outside female observers immediately run this through misogyny filters and take it as evidence of gender bias? I’d be tempted to first think that the typical female observer is clearly the more biased and in-the-wrong one here, not to mention that schminux probably wasn’t talking about announcing statistical gender differences in public as The Truth to all Unbelievers so that typical unspecific gender observers can spin it however they want. A question was made with a tentative, low-confidence claim, to LessWrong. Not the Daily Opinions Column.
Also, base rate your typical observers. To the typical male observer, this conversation isn’t what we’re all doing here. To the typical male observer, “LOLOLOL YALL ARE CRAZY BITCHEZ STOP BEIN FAGS IMA GO GET A BEER”… but is that the kind of people we’re looking for? The kind that go “lololol bitchez” or “such a bunch of jerks, all patriarchy-infested egocentric pretenders” at the first sight of any discussion on LessWrong that is even partially about gender differences?
Sure. Take the outside view. Male commenters on the internet have some distribution of attitudes towards gender. Some of those attitudes are more or less likely to lead to comments like “most slow drivers are female.” One of those attitudes (simplifying considerably) is having and being unaware of male privilege, call it M. A comment C on the internet is Bayesian evidence for M if and only if M-commenters are more likely to make comments like C than non-M commenters. My claim is that a comment like shminux’s is more likely to come from someone who has and is unaware of their male privilege than from someone who is at least aware of their male privilege.
In this particular case, you have inside view reasons to believe that shminux’s statement was generated via some other process than the one I’m suggesting that shminux’s statement provides weak evidence for (emphasis on the weak). There’s no contradiction here.
Forget what I said about the typical outside female observer. The point of that device was to 1) enforce outside view and 2) make gender issues more salient.
He did say it in public. It’s right here on LessWrong.
Okay. That makes it much clearer.
It’s now obvious to me that the outside viewer does see P(M|C) > P(M|¬C), and why.
However, what schminux gave is not C, but R(C) + Q, and to any attentive reader I assume that P(M|R(C)+Q+C) < P(M|¬C) < P(M) < P(M|C); where R(C) is a meta-observation about one’s own (past?) observations/comments C¹ , and Q is a question about the evidence carried by C and R(C).
Any external reader who misses this is, as far as I can tell, simply wrong. They were most likely themselves taken by confirmation bias or some other undesirable effect.
Confirmation bias among self-proclaimed feminists is actually something I have a rather high prior for, since they train themselves to see gender bias everywhere in many cases.
(and R(C) does include C as a component once unwrapped, but for clarity I added C in the chain above; assume appropriate anti-double-counting measures are taken)
Would I be a misogynist (or a gynophile) if I pointed out that (for cultural and other reasons) many women fare better in social situations? Would you dispute any such difference, or would you assume some sort of hidden agenda whenever such a difference is stated?
Miso this, miso that, miserere more like.
Given the differences (on average) between gender groups, for nearly any given topic it would be highly unexpected for the distribution to be strictly uniform. Same applies for different age groups.
Is me saying that ‘bad’?
(I would have a similarly strong reaction if discussions about, say, foresting strategies, were overlain with highly charged political terms.)
Weak evidence of misogyny. Emphasis on the weak.
What?
Essentially, gender discussions are constructed to penalize half of the discussion. That’s pretty much exactly why I file gender discussion as a strictly political issue; it’s built on an us-versus-them dynamic.
I am extremely curious what gender everyone in this discussion thinks I am. (Also, I agree, but which half were you thinking of?)
Doesn’t matter what gender you are. I didn’t say half the participants, I said half the discussion. The us-versus-them isn’t constructed on gender lines, but ideological lines.
And the half which you just explicitly stated you penalize (however weakly), and which I broadly see penalized in the majority of gender discussions.
I have always subconsciously assumed that you are male, probably based on the overall LW gender distribution. Unfortunately I have no intuitions relating gender to Chinese names.
In most of my social circles, gender discussions are the most in your face examples of arguments as soldiers. Knowing that politics is the mind-killer, I usually keep my mouth shut.
“Why make that observation?” is a bad question. Whether or not you have a reason that morally justifies you to make that observation has little to do with the issue of whether making that observation and telling other people about it, correlates with having misogynist tendencies.
You can measure misogynist tendencies with an implicit association tests. Misogynist tendencies are something real that you can measure in the lab. The test doesn’t care about whether you can provide some intellectual justification for your observations.
So by that definition it’s perfectly possible for lack of “misogynist tendencies” to constitute a bias.
If you’re actually right eighty percent of the time, it merely makes you accurate—but beware of confirmation and hindsight bias here. I’m not sure I’d trust that kind of impression unless I’d asked someone to take notes for me or set up some kind of automated process; too many chances for things to go wrong otherwise.
When I’ve found myself being annoyed by slow and timid drivers I don’t recall having any particular thoughts about their gender, but I have often thought that they’re probably old. Which I also feel is confirmed more often than not—but I’ll be the first to admit that I might harbor some irrationalities regarding the elderly, and I think the priors are probably against me here. But it certainly fits the cultural script!
A self-admitted misogerontist, oh dear.
How so? It would be strange if there were no difference between “driving habits of the elderly” versus the non-elderly. Given how strongly these groups differ in all sorts of biological / sociological / cultural characteristics.
Oh, I’m sure there are some differences in driving habits. The question is whether those differences in habits are large enough to overwhelm the differences in base rate, and I’d expect to see a lot more young to middle-aged people on the road than elderly people—particularly in the rush-hour traffic where I was putting in most of my driving hours.
I didn’t feel that there were disproportionate numbers of slow and timid elderly drivers, after all, I felt that a randomly selected slow, timid driver was probably elderly—and I’d take a bet that that isn’t objectively the case, contrary to my subjective impressions.
What good might it do you to have an accurate opinion about the gender of slow and timid drivers?
I can’t think of any.
Forming accurate opinions is a useful habit toi have in general.
What’s your exact question? Do you want to know whether behaving like that will increase the chances that you will act sexist in other situations?
Or do you want to know whether the label of being sexist applies to you based on your behavior in that instance?
How well do you know that’s 80%? If you would now commit to writing down the next 100 results of such guesses, how confident (what p value) would you be that between 70 and 90 times it’s a woman?
Why?
You might be remembering the times you are correct more clearly than the times you are wrong.
I thought about it, but I think I remember being surprised better than being right. But who knows, I did not keep count.
Just change ‘timid’ to ‘careful’, and suddenly it’s a whole lot less sexist.
Every statement of the template “[This sex] is more [X]” also has a contrapositive “[The other sex] is less [X]”.
Incorrect. It’s just sexist in a different way. Just because sexism is more acceptable doesn’t make it less sexist.
You know, I was actually wondering that myself, and I’ve been thinking about it often since I posted that. But it certainly feels a lot less sexist to me. Something about that word ‘timid’ just bugged me. Maybe it’s just that it hits a bit close to home; I’m a woman, and I don’t drive, but I am a timid/cautious bicycle-rider...
It’s less offensive; that’s not the same as less sexist. The short-winded explanation of why is that it’s pretty much the same as saying men are incautious.
I think it depends on how you’re defining sexist. In particular the later version seems less likely to be read as offensive by the average women.
Sexism isn’t that which is offensive to women.
You may not use sexism as synonymous with offensive to women, but whether or not something is offensive to women is a significant part of how many people decide to apply the label sexist. Thus, there are reasonable definitions of sexist such that something that is less offensive to the average women is less sexist that an otherwise comparable statement.
That is connotative begging and I will have no part in it, nor grant any leniency to it. It’s accidental fraud at best, dark arts at worst.
I can find no google hits for this term so it would be helpful if you can explain what you mean. Meanwhile, I see no problem with pointing out that you’re trying to impose a normative definition that is not representative of how I routinely see the term used IRL.
It’s not a term, although I guess I can see where the confusion might arise.
Begging the question is assuming the thing you ought to be proving; I was using begging to refer shorthand to this fallacy. Using “sexist” to describe things that are offensive to women is begging the question for the connotation that is applied by the use of the word; it doesn’t particularly matter if that’s how the word is frequently used, if frequently used in that way, it’s frequently used in a dishonest and dark-artsy manner.
The connotations of the word sexism are driven by its meaning, not its use. If we want to use sexism to refer to things which are merely offensive to women, and not discriminatory against women, then sure, we can do that. But we cannot then pretend that the word has the same gravitas; it ceases to be usefully indicative of any sort of injustice, intellectual or otherwise, and becomes instead a signal for personal preference, a considerable drop in connotative power.
Ok, that (kinda) clarifies things.
I was not making doing so. I was making a statement about how the word sexist is actually used, and to a lesser extent how it is practical to use sexist ( in my experience when people say they they’re concerned about offending women and/social consequences that are strongly correlated with offending women). I thought this was clear from the post and the general context of how LW usually handles discussions about language. Furthermore, I don’t believe that your op or first response make it remotely clear that you have any justification beyond attempting connotation begging of your own to enforce a narrow normative definition of a broadly used term. I typed this much because I unilaterally ending conversations when the participants don’t yet understand each other to be rude. However, now that (I think) we understand what the other is saying I don’t think this conversation is worth continuing, and my lack of counterargument should not be taken as agreement(or disagreement) with what (I think) you are claiming.
Sequentially, #11, #22, #23, #26, #30, #37.
And probably a few others.
The LW rules on discussions about language aren’t “Don’t have them.” They’re, essentially, to have arguments about language when they clarify things, not when they confuse things.
No, just a good Bayesian.
-a (sadly deleted) @NeinQuarterly tweet.
How is this relevant to my comment?
Implying a (false?) dichotomy between Bayesian and sexism, perhaps? I’m confused too.
Not seeing the relevance either.
We should all strive to use the best and most accurate stereotypes and avoid inaccurate ones. A stereotype after all is a just a heuristic applied to humans.