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How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

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Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#221

Post by tfinniga »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #171
tfinniga wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there is a reason why I chose those examples. I'm not arguing for diversity at all costs, which seems like what you're arguing against. I'd say in general having researchers and university teachers that are intelligent is good. Diversity is also good. There should be a balance - I think that diverse researchers and teachers can solve problems that a homogenous group of researchers would never solve. For example…

Diversity is also good. There should be a balance There's a huge assumption built into this, about what dimensions of diversity are virtuous. Our society places great value on showing diversity on scales of gender and race, and to a lesser extent also on religion and more recently, gender identity. Why are these demographics the ones for which we should be endeavoring to ensure diversity? Why shouldn't we strive to f…

I think the general principle is that societal decision makers should be roughly representative of the people whose lives are impacted by the decisions.

Of course it's possible to take this too far.

As for why race and gender are considered important, I think it's probably because they are easy to measure, and there has been a lot of discrimination. Most of the other demographics are probably pretty evenly represented? I've never heard of someone getting passed over for promotion or housing because they were left-handed.

The city/country split is a good point. There is some provision for that in many political systems, with different geographical regions being represented based on population, but it's far from a perfect system.

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#222

Post by dlss »

logfromblammo wrote: post #178
golemotron wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, no. When you pick out an individual there's still a 60% chance than one is better than the other given no other information than their sex. That's how statistics works. But I agree that it's better not to make the prejudgement at all. The problem is that there are many things that are true in the aggregate but we can't acknowledge them because we are scared of demotivating people. Is that the best we can do…

That is not how statistics works. This is how you reverse a conditional probability (Bayes's Rule): P(B|A) = P(A|B) * P(B) / P(A) If A is "female" and ~A is "male", and B is "good engineer", then what we know , including ancestor post's assumption, is this: P(A|B) = 0.4 (the population of known-good engineers is 40% female) P(A) = 0.5 (the population as a whole is 50% female) We can further assume, arbitrarily, that…

This also isn't how statistics works.

> We can further assume, arbitrarily, that P(B) = 0.02 (one in every fifty people make good engineers). So the likelihood that a person is a good engineer given that they are female is P(B|A).

  > P(B|A) = 0.4 * 0.02 / 0.5 = 0.016
  > P(B|~A) = 0.6 * 0.02 / 0.5 = 0.024
> What we learn from this is that sex is not a good screening criterion for finding good engineers. You realize an advantage of only 0.8%, not 60%.

if you multiply two numbers (here 0.4 and 0.6) by the same constant (here 0.02 / 0.5) you can't then say "You realize an advantage of only 0.8%, not 60%"... 0.016/0.024 == 40/60.

Re: OP's point ("When you pick out an individual there's still a 60% chance than one is better than the other given no other information than their sex"), I agree that's wrong, but not for the reason given. He's not reversing a conditional probability, but rather asking a question about the unconditional probability (the base rate), so the 60/40 conditional information is not relevant.

If you pick two random individuals, one male and one female, and the IQ average of the two groups is equal (roughly true, from the article), the chance that one has a higher IQ than the other is 50%.

  julia> sum([randn() > (randn() * 10) for i=1:1_000_000])
  499884
IE assuming that men have 10x the IQ variance, the variance makes literally no difference when comparing two random people.

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#223

Post by Retric »

6502nerdface wrote: post #184
logfromblammo wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not how statistics works. This is how you reverse a conditional probability (Bayes's Rule): P(B|A) = P(A|B) * P(B) / P(A) If A is "female" and ~A is "male", and B is "good engineer", then what we know , including ancestor post's assumption, is this: P(A|B) = 0.4 (the population of known-good engineers is 40% female) P(A) = 0.5 (the population as a whole is 50% female) We can further assume, arbitrarily, that…

Thanks for presenting this so clearly. However, note that, as you show in this scenario, males are, on a relative basis, 50% more likely than females to be good engineers, knowing nothing else about them other than gender (P(B|~A) = 1.5 * P(B|A)). While the absolute probabilities (and difference in probabilities) are small, the relative improvement in classification error rate attributable to knowing the person's gen…

This assumes it's independent of other data.

If your classifier also knows that an applicant has a CS degree and hypothetically a higher percentage of females with CS degrees than males with CS degrees are talented. Then the relationship might reverse.

The point is stats about populations often fail to carry over to sub populations.

PS: This flip is actually fairly common in the face of discrimination. Basically, you would expect the first hundred female fighter pilots to be way above average.

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#224

Post by dragonwriter »

golemotron wrote: post #36

I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. The current educational and political system is organized toward exclusively presenting the view that gender is a cultural construct and there are no differences between men and women other than plumbing. Men and women, on average, differ significantly on career choice, likes, dislikes, and motivation. And, it has…

> Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time.

No, its not. Just about everyone, on all sides of the gender issues debates expressly acknowledges that sex-correlated differences exist, though the nature, extent, invariability, and policy relevance of those differences is endlessly debated.

The idea that the existence of differences is a "taboo" is simply a strawman constructed by one side to pretend to be a victim of suppression and avoid meaningful engagement on specific issues.

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#225

Post by throwaway999666 »

tfinniga wrote: post #29

It's interesting to realize that if two groups have the same mean but different variability, the higher-variability group will have more outliers, on both the high end and the low end. The danger is a kind of genetic fatalism, assuming that what we should do is just to be determined by our genes and how our bodies work. For example, it's possible for a man to produce many children by impregnating lots of women concur…

> But even if we took the argument as fact, it doesn't mean that we have to accept every naive consequence. We don't need to say "Of course the vast majority of CEOs, world leaders, and very wealthy people are male, because the most intelligent people are almost all male". We can choose to have a better society than that.

Which in practice means help relatively successful women crack "the glass ceiling", while the men who find themselves in the bottom of the lower half of the distribution in some sense by societal standards can get stuffed.

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#226

Post by dragonwriter »

mikeash wrote: post #107
bryanlarsen wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large part of the problem is the failure to distinguish between the aggregate and the individual. For the sake of argument let's say that the population of individuals who would make good engineers is 60% male and 40% female. From an aggregate level that's a huge difference. Once you gather enough of people that statistical inferences can be made, the difference becomes obvious. In a classroom, for instance. But at…

That really is the crux of the matter. Everyone should be given an equal chance with no prejudice, and then if population differences still emerge, that's OK. Unfortunately there isn't much room for this middle ground. People who want to acknowledge sex difference want to use sex as a filter, e.g. "no women in combat roles." People who want to give everybody a chance also want to even things out, e.g. "Allow women in…

> Unfortunately there isn't much room for this middle ground. People who want to acknowledge sex difference want to use sex as a filter, e.g. "no women in combat roles." People who want to give everybody a chance also want to even things out, e.g. "Allow women in combat roles, and lower the standards for women so they have just as much of a chance as men have."

I've literally never heard the latter argument made by any proponent of women in combat roles. The closest I've seen is calls for the requirements for certain combat roles to be reviewed for appropriateness to the real requirements of the specific role; most proponents of relaxing blanket restrictions on women in combat roles I've heard will explicitly accept that, for most roles, any reasonable set of standards will still make it easier for men.

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#227

Post by wesnerm2 »

golemotron wrote: post #36

I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. The current educational and political system is organized toward exclusively presenting the view that gender is a cultural construct and there are no differences between men and women other than plumbing. Men and women, on average, differ significantly on career choice, likes, dislikes, and motivation. And, it has…

Most of what we believe about gender is based on societal beliefs rather than biological reality. I am reminded about how high heels were worn by men in the past and the preferred colors for boys and girls (pink and blue) were switched. (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-st...; http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21151350)

Our faulty assumptions become clear when viewing other societies. For example, in the former USSR, 58% of engineers were women. In China, 40% of engineers are women, where less than 47% of the population are women. The communist countries placed a greater emphasis on gender equality in workforce. Sharp differences between west and the east are evident in other occupations such as medicine.

In the study cited, the mean age of the babies (neonates) was 3 days. That's enough time for babies to be influenced by adult interactions. Babies have been shown to be handled differently by adults based on their gender. Female babies are spoken to more, whereas male babies are handled more.

In the study, a substantial number of babies exhibited behaviors associated with the other gender. I would resist talking about a real sexual dimorphism when gender is not determinative of social vs mechanical preference.

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#228

Post by unclebucknasty »

ufo wrote: post #146
unclebucknasty wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thought exactly: we've gone so far afield with this ridiculous notion of "sameness" between sexes that we actually now need "serious" research to "debunk" what was so obviously never true. "This just in: women and men are not exactly the same!" The real problem is that our society tends to equate sameness with acceptability as its preferred mode of "tolerance". This has the paradoxical effect of re-inforcing the n…

The problem is that while on average there are significant differences between men and women, the individual variation within men and within women is so much larger than these sex-based differences that sex is not a good predictor for behavior in the majority of the cases.

Well, I'm not so sure how constructive it is to try making behavioral predictions about people based on general categories (race, sex, etc.) in the first place. I think it's far more useful to seek understanding and respect.
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