Gender Imbalances Are Mostly Not Due to Offensive Attitudes(slatestarcodex.com)
slatestarcodex.com
Gender Imbalances Are Mostly Not Due to Offensive Attitudes
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-not-due-to-offensive-attitudes/
11 comments
This piece tries to argue that women are less interested in libertarianism because they are "less rationalizing-systemizing" and therefore don't "get" libertarianism, but many underlying assumptions are very weak.
For example:
Producing Children poses a significantly larger economic burden for women than for men (the primary cause for women receiving more welfare is their higher likelihood of being a single parent), so it is very unsurprising that they view welfare programs differently.
Alexander also implies that people who think offensive / sexist people are lowering participation of women by hurting their feelings, not by ignoring or dismissing issues that disproportionally affect women, which I find a bit odd. If libertarianism is about personal freedom there is plenty of space for issues that affect women (like abortion, freedom to wear certain types of clothing without being harassed, ...), yet I see very few libertarian talking about those issues.
I find the idea that women dislike a certain thing because of some pseudo-scientific evo-psych goop rather than economic reasons a bit absurd.
[0] https://www.libraryindex.com/pages/901/Who-Receives-Benefits...
For example:
> A less-empathizing/more-systematizing personality would make people more interested in the politics of effective institutions than in the politics of provisioning social welfare.
Producing Children poses a significantly larger economic burden for women than for men (the primary cause for women receiving more welfare is their higher likelihood of being a single parent), so it is very unsurprising that they view welfare programs differently.
Alexander also implies that people who think offensive / sexist people are lowering participation of women by hurting their feelings, not by ignoring or dismissing issues that disproportionally affect women, which I find a bit odd. If libertarianism is about personal freedom there is plenty of space for issues that affect women (like abortion, freedom to wear certain types of clothing without being harassed, ...), yet I see very few libertarian talking about those issues.
I find the idea that women dislike a certain thing because of some pseudo-scientific evo-psych goop rather than economic reasons a bit absurd.
[0] https://www.libraryindex.com/pages/901/Who-Receives-Benefits...
> If women in these communities feel harassed more often, it’s more likely to be a result of gender balance than a cause of it.
Rather than speculate, you could also ask those women why they feel harassed. But then you might not get the answer you're looking for!
Rather than speculate, you could also ask those women why they feel harassed. But then you might not get the answer you're looking for!
How does asking why someone feels harassed help?
Let's assume for the sake of argument that women and men are equally likely to "harass" someone, and let's say that likelihood is 10%.
When there is a 50:50 gender split, you get equal harassment. You'll have five harassers and five victims, so everyone has a 1:10 chance of being harassed.
Now let's have a 90:10 gender split. With still the same equal 1:10 chance, a woman now has a 90% chance of being harassed, whereas a man's chance is 1%. Due to this being an n^2 problem, a 10:1 gender ratio leads to a 100:1 "harassment ratio".
These are simply numerical calculations. How does how someone "feels" about them impact them?
Let's assume for the sake of argument that women and men are equally likely to "harass" someone, and let's say that likelihood is 10%.
When there is a 50:50 gender split, you get equal harassment. You'll have five harassers and five victims, so everyone has a 1:10 chance of being harassed.
Now let's have a 90:10 gender split. With still the same equal 1:10 chance, a woman now has a 90% chance of being harassed, whereas a man's chance is 1%. Due to this being an n^2 problem, a 10:1 gender ratio leads to a 100:1 "harassment ratio".
These are simply numerical calculations. How does how someone "feels" about them impact them?
"Let's assume for the sake of argument that women and men are equally likely to "harass" someone, and let's say that likelihood is 10%."
You've done good math (I think?) on a false premise.
People harass other people when the environment is open to it or encourages it. That seems to happen in a lot of male-dominated environments.
People aren't compelled to harass or not in a pre-programmed way and they don't do it evenly no matter what surrounds them. They respond to incentives and their surroundings.
You've done good math (I think?) on a false premise.
People harass other people when the environment is open to it or encourages it. That seems to happen in a lot of male-dominated environments.
People aren't compelled to harass or not in a pre-programmed way and they don't do it evenly no matter what surrounds them. They respond to incentives and their surroundings.
Hmmm, "let's assume for the sake of argument" is usually used to introduce a premise that the author does not (necessarily) believe to be true, and this is exactly what happened here. Otherwise we wouldn't have to "assume" it "for the sake of argument".
Introducing a premise you believe to be true is done differently, for example: "it happens to be the case..."
So anyway, the point of the little mathematical exercise was to show that even highly skewed outcomes in "harassment" don't allow you to conclude that there is an environment that is open or encouraging, at least not if you have an unequally distributed population, because in such skewed populations, you get highly skewed outcomes even if the propensity is equal (which it most likely isn't).
> People harass other people when the environment is open to it or encourages it.
> That seems to happen in a lot of male-dominated environments.
Evidence that this is at all causative? Especially given the numbers I provided.
Anyway, another big factor is that in humans, the male is very much required to initiate, and that something like 70% of relationships happen on the job (and yes the drive to reproduce is one of our most powerful motivators, otherwise we'd be extinct as a species). Couple that with socially awkward nerds and the weird expansion of the definition of "harassment", particularly in the US, and I think you've got it covered.
Oh, and add companies like Uber where breaking laws, rules and norms is company policy.
Introducing a premise you believe to be true is done differently, for example: "it happens to be the case..."
So anyway, the point of the little mathematical exercise was to show that even highly skewed outcomes in "harassment" don't allow you to conclude that there is an environment that is open or encouraging, at least not if you have an unequally distributed population, because in such skewed populations, you get highly skewed outcomes even if the propensity is equal (which it most likely isn't).
> People harass other people when the environment is open to it or encourages it.
> That seems to happen in a lot of male-dominated environments.
Evidence that this is at all causative? Especially given the numbers I provided.
Anyway, another big factor is that in humans, the male is very much required to initiate, and that something like 70% of relationships happen on the job (and yes the drive to reproduce is one of our most powerful motivators, otherwise we'd be extinct as a species). Couple that with socially awkward nerds and the weird expansion of the definition of "harassment", particularly in the US, and I think you've got it covered.
Oh, and add companies like Uber where breaking laws, rules and norms is company policy.
Anecdotally, by far the raunchiest place I've ever worked was a catering job that had a pretty even male/female split (not sure if it was exactly 50/50) with women overseeing the operation. That place was a lot of fun.
See, being raunchy is not harassing someone or being dismissive due to someone's gender.
Unwanted threatening sexual advances are different as well.
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I do not. Utilitarianism, at its core, is the exact opposite of "thing-oriented" - it treats rightness of action as a function of the action's good, rather than as a property of actions. In the (act) utilitarian view, something is not good or bad in and of itself - it is only good or bad with respect to its consequences. As such, an act utilitarian should give no mind to "things" themselves, but only to the actions that produce the best outcomes.
Edit:
I enjoy reading SSC, but I think Scott Alexander (and the normal rash of new utilitarians) consistently make the same mistakes that their positivist progenitors made in the 1940s. I wish we (academia, and society as a whole) would stop treating science and human concerns as prickles and goo[1].
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vHnM8WPvU