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OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

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Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#51

Post by QuantumChaos »

paulhauggis wrote: post #18

I'm still not sure why this article is equating preference with racism. If I'm attracted to white women and I'm white, it has nothing to do with racism.

Racism is a politically loaded term, and it's not possible to use it out of the context of a progressive viewpoint that defines racism to be a culture of White supremacy. In this context, the author is assuming that Black women are as beautiful as Hispanic and White women, but that the racism that pervades our culture causes them to view Black features as unattractive.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#52

Post by iamdave »

vacri wrote: post #49
iamdave wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a question I've been asking, as a black man for a very, very, very long time. Couldn't count on two hands, even a third if I had one the number of different answers I've gotten, and not a single one of them-no matter the rationality or validity behind the history of it, has yet to answer why we still use it. That said, "Person of Color" seems to be the new trendy thing and that baffles me even more (well, to be…

I remember seeing an article talking about a black British model, born and raised in the UK, in a French fashion shoot, described as African-American. Her own country would refer to her as British, not African-British... Here in Australia we're getting infected with this compound term, to reassert that heritage doesn't mean non-citizen. It's really annoying, because I grew up in a suburb of Greeks and Italians, who w…

Agreed. John McWhorter brought up a lot of decent and salient points about the words we use to describe individuals, and how simply substituting one for another doesn't really solve the problem (http://time.com/2369/richard-sherman-thug-n-word/). That can be said about a lot of social ailments in swiftly moving, developed civilizations, if I must offer a caveat.

There's a lot of bluster that goes on among certain "progressive" crowds that ultimately sums the solutions up to policing of rhetoric; and while I have to admit they're somewhat onto something with the notions that "language informs impressions", a lot of their approaches seem deeply misguided if only because there's a vacuum of nuance.

I personally don't have the answers to how to remediate the baggage that comes with cultural nomenclature... I do however believe rather sternly, that demanding a change of vernacular is not a silver bullet.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#53

Post by tgb »

shawndrost wrote: post #46
beloch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OKTrends went dormant when OKCupid was sold to the company that operates match.com. I don't know what Rudder's involvement with OKCupid was after that, but he was no longer one of the owners. He might have still worked there, but kept his blog silent under pressure from management.

The blog went silent b/c Christian was put in charge of everydamnthing at the OKC office as Sam (the old CEO) moved up after the acquisition. I don't think there was any pressure from management, which would have been dumb -- the blog was a great asset to OKC/Match aside from that one post that they deleted for obvious reasons. (Source: I used to work at OkCupid Labs, one of the things that Sam went on to do under Ma…

What was the subject of the post that was deleted? (Is there an archive of it?)

Edit: from other comments: http://machinesentience.com/why_you_should_never_pay_for_onl...

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#54

Post by CDRdude »

tgb wrote: post #53
shawndrost wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blog went silent b/c Christian was put in charge of everydamnthing at the OKC office as Sam (the old CEO) moved up after the acquisition. I don't think there was any pressure from management, which would have been dumb -- the blog was a great asset to OKC/Match aside from that one post that they deleted for obvious reasons. (Source: I used to work at OkCupid Labs, one of the things that Sam went on to do under Ma…

What was the subject of the post that was deleted? (Is there an archive of it?) Edit: from other comments: http://machinesentience.com/why_you_should_never_pay_for_onl...

The title of the post was: "Why you should never pay for online dating". This appears to be a rehosted version of it:

http://static.izs.me/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dat...

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#55

Post by philip1209 »

iamdave wrote: post #52
vacri wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember seeing an article talking about a black British model, born and raised in the UK, in a French fashion shoot, described as African-American. Her own country would refer to her as British, not African-British... Here in Australia we're getting infected with this compound term, to reassert that heritage doesn't mean non-citizen. It's really annoying, because I grew up in a suburb of Greeks and Italians, who w…

Agreed. John McWhorter brought up a lot of decent and salient points about the words we use to describe individuals, and how simply substituting one for another doesn't really solve the problem ( http://time.com/2369/richard-sherman-thug-n-word/ ). That can be said about a lot of social ailments in swiftly moving, developed civilizations, if I must offer a caveat. There's a lot of bluster that goes on among certain "…

I'm in favor of saying "ethnically African." It says nothing about nationality.

In the context of a statistical analysis, like the OkCupid analysis, it's completely correct to segment people by ethnicity and by nationality separately, and it makes a lot more sense in that context to say "Americans of African ethnicity." "African Americans" is an equivocal phrase in an analytical context because people use it to refer to ethnicity, when it actually refers to both nationality and ethnicity.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#56

Post by com2kid »

Natsu wrote: post #24
nether wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pressure from management? Sam Yagan is still the site's CEO. Also the pressure must have failed because he's releasing a whole book about his findings now, not just blog posts. You people are ridiculous.

Most of us have not forgotten the "why you should never pay for a dating site" analysis that vanished, nor will we any time soon. EDIT: Might as well link to it while I am at it - http://machinesentience.com/why_you_should_never_pay_for_onl... Also, I know the explanation they gave. I don't give a damn whether anyone was pressured into taking it down and they never bothered to actually explain what was wrong with the…

OKC staff have publicly, repeatedly, that the reason the article was taken down was that after their acquisition by Match, the OK Trends staff had access to new data which showed that their original conclusion was wrong.

Example of such an explanation: http://www.reddit.com/r/OkCupid/comments/pr2wo/dyk_that_okcu...

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#57

Post by iamdave »

philip1209 wrote: post #55
iamdave wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. John McWhorter brought up a lot of decent and salient points about the words we use to describe individuals, and how simply substituting one for another doesn't really solve the problem ( http://time.com/2369/richard-sherman-thug-n-word/ ). That can be said about a lot of social ailments in swiftly moving, developed civilizations, if I must offer a caveat. There's a lot of bluster that goes on among certain "…

I'm in favor of saying "ethnically African." It says nothing about nationality. In the context of a statistical analysis, like the OkCupid analysis, it's completely correct to segment people by ethnicity and by nationality separately, and it makes a lot more sense in that context to say "Americans of African ethnicity." "African Americans" is an equivocal phrase in an analytical context because people use it to refer…

Yup 100%.

You would not believe the amount of fire I got responding to the writings of another black writer who touched this topic: Ta-Nehisi Coates when I expressed the exact same point.

I think the troubling aspect is the disconnect in the area you highlighted: necessity in context. Sadly there is so much demagogy taking place in the larger conversation of "race" that not even natural sciences like the study of statistics are safe from mindsets that want to rule conversation with politics over pragmatism.

Nomenclature exists to easily quantify and reference, not necssiarily objectify.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#58

Post by vacri »

philip1209 wrote: post #55
iamdave wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. John McWhorter brought up a lot of decent and salient points about the words we use to describe individuals, and how simply substituting one for another doesn't really solve the problem ( http://time.com/2369/richard-sherman-thug-n-word/ ). That can be said about a lot of social ailments in swiftly moving, developed civilizations, if I must offer a caveat. There's a lot of bluster that goes on among certain "…

I'm in favor of saying "ethnically African." It says nothing about nationality. In the context of a statistical analysis, like the OkCupid analysis, it's completely correct to segment people by ethnicity and by nationality separately, and it makes a lot more sense in that context to say "Americans of African ethnicity." "African Americans" is an equivocal phrase in an analytical context because people use it to refer…

Ethnicity also includes culture - a black person in the US sharing the same phenotype as a black person in Africa is not ethnically African, no more than an English white is ethnically French. It's difficult in that there isn't a clean solution, otherwise it would already have been found.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#59

Post by istjohn »

burgers wrote: post #11

The spookiest thing is not the data or the experiments, but the off the cuff conclusions. For example: > As a group, for instance, Latino men rated Latinas as 13 percent more attractive than the average for the site, while they rated African-American women 25 percent less attractive. That is an insane generalization going on. What metric are we using to determine this? Is it possible that people who tend to participa…

You accuse them of making off the cuff conclusions, but the example you cited is basically raw data. And this is not "dangerous stuff." Yes statistics can be used by some people to justify stereotypes, but the correct response is to see people as individuals and not simply in terms of race, sex, culture, class, etc. We do not need to suppress or be exceedingly cautious about data. The impulse to suppress data comes from a belief that some statistic if demonstrated could justify racism or bigotry. But this is not true. Suppose it was a fact that 90% of people over 6 feet tall never wash their hands after using the restroom and this was discovered by researchers. Those inclined to bigotry would conclude that tall people are dirty and should be avoided. More fair-minded folks would refrain from assuming every tall person they meet is one of the 90% who doesn't wash their hands. Instead, they might wonder if there is a reason tall people aren't washing their hands. Maybe bathroom sinks are too low. Bigotry and racism are dangerous, not statistics.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#60

Post by Natsu »

com2kid wrote: post #56
Natsu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us have not forgotten the "why you should never pay for a dating site" analysis that vanished, nor will we any time soon. EDIT: Might as well link to it while I am at it - http://machinesentience.com/why_you_should_never_pay_for_onl... Also, I know the explanation they gave. I don't give a damn whether anyone was pressured into taking it down and they never bothered to actually explain what was wrong with the…

OKC staff have publicly, repeatedly, that the reason the article was taken down was that after their acquisition by Match, the OK Trends staff had access to new data which showed that their original conclusion was wrong. Example of such an explanation: http://www.reddit.com/r/OkCupid/comments/pr2wo/dyk_that_okcu...

Well, I'm afraid I didn't see that Reddit discussion from 2 years ago, but quoting from it:

> Basically the breakdown was that rather than 93%+ of the people you are shown being "dead profiles" the actual number is more like 10-20%.

> But if you take these into consideration, our conclusion would say, "Match.com users get married at about the same rate or higher as people not using Match.com!"

That's not really a ringing endorsement here, at best it shows that if we change our estimates a little we can reverse our conclusions. That to me says that they were never able to come to very reliable conclusions in the first place on this issue.

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