These are all good points. Given that 20-30% of scientists are women, it’s misleading to say “scientists are normally men” without quantifying “normally.” And though most users of this website are americans, and men, and hetero, and college-educated, possibly it is not normal for them to be all at once (I could have picked better examples). But I don’t like the idea of people scoring less-parochial-than-thou points off of each other through trivial mistakes along these lines. Maybe that doesn’t happen.
A third type of inaccurate stereotyping is mistaking P(B|A) for P(A|B). Most criminals are men, but most men are not criminals.
The usual emphasis on this website is the close relationship between these probabilities, and its important consequences.
These are all good points. Given that 20-30% of scientists are women, it’s misleading to say “scientists are normally men” without quantifying “normally.” And though most users of this website are americans, and men, and hetero, and college-educated, possibly it is not normal for them to be all at once (I could have picked better examples). But I don’t like the idea of people scoring less-parochial-than-thou points off of each other through trivial mistakes along these lines. Maybe that doesn’t happen.
The usual emphasis on this website is the close relationship between these probabilities, and its important consequences.