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How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

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Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#101

Post by __bb »

pvaldes wrote: post #24
petewailes wrote: post #3

I suspect a large part of this is down to 1. People defaulting to the nuclear option constantly, in their reactions, and 2. People not wanting to accept that some issues are complex, and that a blanket approach doesn't work. The latter of these is the real issue. People love being outraged over the lack of women in STEM fields, and how those that are are treated, but few people talk about the lack of men in teaching…

> The most outspoken people against both aren't from the countryside, have never kept cattle or been on hunts, don't understand (or want to think too much) about the issues involved, but know that badgers and foxes are cute. You have your point, but is a common and too simplistic interpretation. We need to repeat this more: To have cattle or being able to shoot a rabbit is irrelevant and not a guarantee at all to und…

> Farmers are experts in breeding cattle. Point. Not more, not less.

I hope you're going for hyperbole here. If not, you may be surprised at the proportion of farmers who do understand how biology works; who do work with vets and other professionals and follow research into animal health and disease.

Your statement does a large number of people a disservice.

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#102

Post by tremon »

belorn wrote: post #91
EliRivers wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't disagree with the general thrust of your argument, as an aside, the lack of men in nursing roles (and teaching, especially to younger children) is seen as a problem and when you spend time in the nursing or teaching community it comes up a lot. Campaigns to attract more men into these professions have been running for a long time. While I'm here, speaking as a townie, I don't see any complexity in the f…

Recently I read a report done by the national agency for higher education in Sweden, on order by the government, to study why there are so few male teachers. As part of the study, a poll was sent to each of the teaching districts in Sweden with question like "what strategies do the district have to increase the ratio of male student for the teaching profession." Out of 19, only 3 responded that they had any strategy…

Personally, I think the recent decided policy by Norway is a good step in the right direction. A simple policy that dictate that minority students, that is when the gender ratio is less than 20%-80%, will receive some benefits/incentives to counter gender discrimination.

I think this is great idea. It is simple to execute and does not attempt to prescribe an "optimal ratio". Of course, there's always room for debate, like whether it should only be applied to gender minorities, but that's simple enough to tweak.

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#103

Post by richmarr »

jules wrote: post #94
richmarr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generalising from that study seems unwise. (a) Hiring faculty is a very different thing (and subject to different rules and policies) than getting students succesfully to graduation. (b) Unless male economists are uniquely meritocratic there's more at play here than personal bias. It seems more likely that the other subjects have a culture of progressively trying to redress historic gender imbalance. Since those pref…

The drop out rates for males are (much) higher. You can speculate on the reason why the discrimination exists, but calling it "a culture of progressively trying to redress historic gender imbalance" is again a collectivist attitude, as if the treatment of somebody's grandmother somehow confers a debt that must be repaid to their granddaughter but not to their grandson, because the granddaughter is in the same tribe a…

I've had Williams/Ceci 2014 quoted at me before and it was hugely over-generalised then too. There's simply no rational basis for claiming (like you implied) that it shows wide-spread discrimination against men. It's a study of tenure-track hiring for four STEM subjects, one of which showed zero bias.

> The drop out rates for males are (much) higher.

Seems off-topic, can you explain the relevence of this? There are serious problems with boys education but they don't seem to have a problem with discrimination in the workplace, see [0][1][2][3][4].

> ... simply because of an attribute that should not significantly factor into the decision.

That's an opinion I think there's reasonable evidence to discard, or at least add some nuance to.

Diverse workplaces are more pleasant to work in, and in the case of universities it seems reasonable to believe (based on the work of Carol Dweck & others) that having relevant female role models would improve outcomes for female students in STEM subjects.

Additionally there's a growing body of evidence that documents how diverse workplaces have higher productivity; and gender gaps in entrepreneurship negatively affect GDP (Cuberes & Teignier for a 2015 example http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21661804-gender-equal...)

[0] Female students seen as less competent than identical male students with identical application materials, offered lower starting salaries (Moss-Racusin et al, 2012)

[1] People in gender-incongruent roles penalised more heavily for mistakes (Brescoll, Dawson, & Uhlmann, 2010).

[2] Voluble women perceived as less competent and less suitable leaders, inverse true for men (Brescoll, 2011).

[3] Women who succeed in male-dominated fields percieved as not likeable (Heilman et al, 2004).

[4] Students question the competence of female teachers who evaluate them negatively, less so than male teachers (Sinclair & Kunda 2000).

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#104

Post by snowwrestler »

__bb wrote: post #101
pvaldes wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most outspoken people against both aren't from the countryside, have never kept cattle or been on hunts, don't understand (or want to think too much) about the issues involved, but know that badgers and foxes are cute. You have your point, but is a common and too simplistic interpretation. We need to repeat this more: To have cattle or being able to shoot a rabbit is irrelevant and not a guarantee at all to und…

> Farmers are experts in breeding cattle. Point. Not more, not less. I hope you're going for hyperbole here. If not, you may be surprised at the proportion of farmers who do understand how biology works; who do work with vets and other professionals and follow research into animal health and disease. Your statement does a large number of people a disservice.

Those are all directly related to raising cattle, though.

What the parent is talking about are the broader consequences of decisions that farmers make based on the limited scope of their expertise.

A big example is the use of antibiotics to manage disease in livestock, which obviously takes some understanding of biology and consultation with vets and other experts. Unfortunately, it is very likely contributing to the evolution of bacteria away from susceptibility to those antibiotics.

Farmers are not unique in the fact that their expertise doesn't cover all possible outcomes. That's true of everyone. It doesn't mean they are ignorant and I don't think it does them a disservice to say it.

What the parent is talking about cultural factors that might lead farmers or other "small town" folks to dismiss the findings of other experts, because those expert don't know as much about farming. A big-city evolutionary biologist Ph.D. is going to look stupid if they're quizzed about raising cattle or shooting guns. That doesn't mean they're wrong about bacterial evolution.

This is not limited to farmers, of course--in big cities you get people who don't listen to doctors about vaccines, simply because they don't know anything about doctors except that they make a lot of money.

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#105

Post by pron »

goldbrick wrote: post #99
pron wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think that actually follows Which is why I said statistically and empirically. As to men caring about this too, this is obviously possible, but even if they care, they are less affected, so they may prioritize it less. Like the joke about the chicken and the pig vis-a-vis breakfast: The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed!

What does "statistically and empirically" mean to you, because it seems a lot like you are using it to mean logic is optional.

I simply mean that some time between 300 BC and 2016 AD somebody figured out that the human mind is great at explaining pretty much anything, so between bouts of solemn cogitation we might want to check out what's really going on in the real world just to make sure that we're on the right track.

Logic is obviously necessary, but as today we know that our universe is not a logical tautology, just one of many possible-Kripke-worlds, different models for the logic can lead to different results, so opening the window from time to time to see which of the possible worlds we actually live in is a good idea.

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#106

Post by [deleted] »

petewailes wrote: post #66
willvarfar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Suffolk is very much a traditional fox hunting area. There are plenty of hunts. Toffs on horseback in red jacket affairs.)

Bits of it are (or more accurately bits of the population are). Depends who you hang around with. The garage where I used to have my car serviced had hunts go past there. If you look at the number of hunts in East Anglia vs the south west, midlands or north west, it's nothing like the same number. And when you consider the population differences, it's even more stark. There's hunts in Suffolk, sure. Just not as much…

[deleted]

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#107

Post by CPLX »

petewailes wrote: post #66
willvarfar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Suffolk is very much a traditional fox hunting area. There are plenty of hunts. Toffs on horseback in red jacket affairs.)

Bits of it are (or more accurately bits of the population are). Depends who you hang around with. The garage where I used to have my car serviced had hunts go past there. If you look at the number of hunts in East Anglia vs the south west, midlands or north west, it's nothing like the same number. And when you consider the population differences, it's even more stark. There's hunts in Suffolk, sure. Just not as much…

You Brits are so quaint and civilized. Here in the states we're still debating the legality of hunting humans who wander into a gated subdivision.

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#108

Post by snowwrestler »

vilda wrote: post #31
EliRivers wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't disagree with the general thrust of your argument, as an aside, the lack of men in nursing roles (and teaching, especially to younger children) is seen as a problem and when you spend time in the nursing or teaching community it comes up a lot. Campaigns to attract more men into these professions have been running for a long time. While I'm here, speaking as a townie, I don't see any complexity in the f…

While it is seen as a problem, the point is that it's not taken seriously enough than the opposite imbalance. There are way worse examples: Male students are getting a whole one level worse marks than female students with the same knowledge [1] (Czech). Theoretically, each parent has an equal right to the custody of the child when they separate. In reality, with a whooping 85-90% the custody is resolved according to…

You've got to get over the idea that there is some sort of fair level at which all these problems should be talked about.

For one thing, unless you've done some rigorous surveying of the total communications landscape, your perception of how seriously everyone is taking these imbalances is going to be limited by what you happen to see (intentional or accidental filtering), and what you remember (confirmation bias).

For another thing, the solutions are not mutually dependent--some people can try to get more women into STEM jobs without hurting the efforts of other people who are trying to get more men into nursing jobs. We don't need to achieve some fair and balanced level of discourse before we start actually fixing things.

Finally, imbalances are not themselves a problem, they are a symptom. In STEM jobs, the big problem is not there are too few women, it is that the culture of many places is abusive and off-putting to women. That's what needs to be solved. Gender imbalance is just a proxy that's easier to measure.

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#109

Post by jules »

richmarr wrote: post #103
jules wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drop out rates for males are (much) higher. You can speculate on the reason why the discrimination exists, but calling it "a culture of progressively trying to redress historic gender imbalance" is again a collectivist attitude, as if the treatment of somebody's grandmother somehow confers a debt that must be repaid to their granddaughter but not to their grandson, because the granddaughter is in the same tribe a…

I've had Williams/Ceci 2014 quoted at me before and it was hugely over-generalised then too. There's simply no rational basis for claiming (like you implied) that it shows wide-spread discrimination against men. It's a study of tenure-track hiring for four STEM subjects, one of which showed zero bias. > The drop out rates for males are (much) higher. Seems off-topic, can you explain the relevence of this? There are s…

> Seems off-topic, can you explain the relevence of this?

You said:

> Hiring faculty is a very different thing (and subject to different rules and policies) than getting students succesfully to graduation.

That's why I mentioned it.

> Diverse workplaces are more pleasant to work in

If somebody's opinion was that all male workplaces are more pleasant to work in, would you find that a reasonable basis for discriminating against female applicants?

> Additionally there's a growing body of evidence that documents how diverse workplaces have higher productivity; and gender gaps in entrepreneurship negatively affect GDP (Cuberes & Teignier for a 2015 example http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21661804-gender-equal...)

Not a very convincing study. They just noticed that women work less than men, and calculated the increase in GDP if women worked as much as men. Note that from the data they use it is apparent that women work more in poorer societies. So maybe women work less in richer societies because they can. This is a good thing, because it means the things people do are dictated more by their passion and less by economic necessity.

The other studies are all about perception. I wonder how much of it is due to the effect that I mentioned (if you confer a selection advantage to a group then it becomes rational to believe that post selection individuals in that group are less competent). I'm also a bit wary of publication bias. I've heard from people in the field that there are certain results that are good for your career and certain results that are not.

Do you know of any reliable studies showing actual discrimination of the magnitude that the study I cited showed?

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#110

Post by Chris2048 »

pron wrote: post #48
viewer5 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either women statistically have common goals or they don't (they do) Like what?

For example, statistically and empirically women get pregnant more often then men. Statistically and empirically, the father is less likely to care for the child than the woman. As a result, statistically and empirically, issues relating to abortion, contraceptives or day care affect the lives of women more than men. For example, statistically and empirically women get sexually assaulted and harassed more than men. S…

> For example, statistically and empirically women get pregnant more often then men

This is obviously true, but I can't see how it's important: statistically and empirically men impregnate women more often than women...

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