How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference? • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by qu4z-2 » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:26 AM UTC

cgearhart wrote: post #244

coverup wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone should be given an equal chance with no prejudice, Agreed. But the way it tends to work is that if (say) 60% of all engineers are men and the rest are women, then a man more closely fits the idea of an engineer that those people who are in charge of giving the chances have in mind, and so they're more likely to prefer a man to a woman. You sort of run into this chicken/egg problem though: are women underre…

> simply aren't choosing to become engineers (okay) It is not certain that this choice is OK, though. While the causes of gender disparity are undoubtedly complicated, there seems to be some persistent factor in engineering & technology that results greater disparity than in other fields like medicine and law. It is unlikely that current participation levels are at their natural equilibrium; the gender distribution w…

Engineering and tech have a reputation for tolerating people (with "non-normal" characteristics), so we need active change to be more inclusive...

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

#282

Post by lexcorvus » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 2:26 AM UTC

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.

I'd argue that race-based differences are even more taboo. But it's close.

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

#283

Post by thret » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 2:43 AM UTC

hellbanner wrote: post #267

thret wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always assumed it was defined by procreation - when we assign gender to individuals of a species - the females lay eggs/give birth, and the males fertilize them.

This breaks down in hermaphrodite creatures and creatures who change sex.

Hermaphrodites are both, creatures who change sex start as one gender and become another. I don't see a problem.

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

#284

Post by MichaelCrawford » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 3:00 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #271

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other traits than IQ which promote the success of the species. Even if unintelligent, physical strength and endurance enable one to hunt, to flee from predators. Sharp eyesight and sensitive hearing. Those of African heritage commonly have Sickle Cell Anemia. While it is a crippling illness it gives one resistance to malaria; in much of Africa that enables one to live longer than those with healthy blood ce…

> Those of African heritage commonly have Sickle Cell Anemia. While it is a crippling illness it gives one resistance to malaria; in much of Africa that enables one to live longer than those with healthy blood cells. That's not quite right. Being heterozygous for the sickle-cell trait produces reduced symptoms from malaria (but not immunity), while being homozygous for the trait produces sickle cell disease and and,…

I stand corrected.

I expect that I was actually taught what you explained however it has been many years.

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

#285

Post by Dylan16807 » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 3:50 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #86

mattmanser wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warning: Unskippable advert on video.

It's YouTube. Whether you get no ad, an ad skippable after 5 seconds, an un-skippable 15 second ad, or an un-skippable longer ad varies. I'm currently getting a skippable after 5 seconds ad. This may also depend on what ad blocker you are using. At least one popular ad blocker [1] sometimes fails to block the "skippable after 5 second" ads but DOES block the "skip this ad" overlay. To make that even more annoying, I…

What? There are unskippable long ads? Those are possible?

The ad blocker theory makes sense.

Though I'll always be amused at some of the skippable hour-long ads youtube has given me.

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

#286

Post by likeclockwork » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:35 AM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #82

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…

> gender is a cultural construct Trans people such as myself are proof that gender is not a social construct. In my experience, the nastiest transphobes are the ones who believe gender is a social construct. They're called TERFs. They can't wrap their minds around the fact that we prove their pet theories wrong, so they stalk, harass, and doxx us.

> Trans people such as myself are proof that gender is not a social construct.

I don't think the existence of trans people proves anything, in either direction, about whether or not gender is a social construct.

We live in a gendered society. Pointing out that some social roles are completely arbitrary doesn't actually change anything. Gender is in the home, on television, on the radio, in books, on the internet, in schools, and in the streets. It's being taught and reinforced everywhere. I don't think anyone could possibly credibly claim to have independently derived gender from their own innate personal characteristics that they were born with and thus have proved that gender is a biological reality.

To assert gender is real because you feel some kind of way after being brainwashed your entire life is... well, I guess that's actually very common but I don't think it furthers any kind of understanding or suggests anything about the way things should be.

I support everyone's right to live their lives the way they need to... but gender is entirely about arbitrarily restricting and labeling people's behavior and I can't endorse it--I'd rather live in a world without labels where everyone is allowed the full range of human expression.

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

#287

Post by likeclockwork » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 4:37 AM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #140

tiler wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you could explain how the existence of trans. people is proof that gender is not a social construct?

Because physical dysphoria is a thing. Whenever I've heard a suggestion that I should just live as a feminine guy, it just makes me feel sick. Even in a world where no gender stereotypes existed, I wouldn't want to be male. I'd rather not live the rest of my life with a masculine face, body hair, a flat chest, male fat distribution, etc. My transition has nothing to do with social roles and everything to do with my b…

That all sounds like sex stuff, not gender stuff.

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

#288

Post by mercer » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 7:19 AM UTC

rndn wrote: post #279

ksrm wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So we are possibly actively destroying a pillar of our culture as we are devaluing marriage. And how are we doing that exactly?

For example in the course of people saying that marriage limits their freedom, that the years of fun are over after it etc. Especially in progressive circles it seems to be frowned upon and it's regarded as boring and unprogressive if people marry early. It's probably also losing value as people become more secular and the concept isn't tied to their world views as tightly anymore. On a more general note, I have the…

As someone raised in an environment that was centered around religion (commune-style, basically), I often worry about how our secular environment will develop as the religious underpinnings of our culture fade away. Our approach to long-term relationships is one thing that sometimes worries me, as is our approach to community-forming.

But as an optimist and a fan of change - change in general, even if it's sometimes bad - I'm really excited to be living in a time where we are free to rediscover and rebuild our world. I hope we can figure out how to keep the things that worked, and find replacements for the things that didn't.

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

#289

Post by logfromblammo » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 2:16 PM UTC

dlss wrote: post #276

logfromblammo wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post looks like a non-sequitur to me. But for the sake of math... For an arbitrary variance multiplier of 10 (std. dev. sqrt(10)), there are no non-imaginary solutions for a high-pass threshold where you can achieve a 60:40 split between two populations that have the same median. You can get about a 58:42 split, putting your threshold a bit below the common median. But to achieve a 60:40 split, you need one popu…

I'm super confused by this reply. The article says that the stddev of the distribution of male IQ is larger than the stddev of the distribution for female IQ, and also seems to state the mean and median are equal. GGP threw out 60/40 as their believed split of men to women being good engineers. I took this to mean that GGP was saying he believed engineering talent to be independent of gender when IQ was present, and…

Easy to explain. I made a mistake in my math. The equation I needed to solve was

  40/60 * erfc( x / sqrt(2))/2 = erfc( sqrt( variance_ratio ) * x / sqrt(2))/2

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

#290

Post by logfromblammo » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 2:46 PM UTC

ksrm wrote: post #277

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…

I don't understand why you are taking the advantage between the two options to be the difference between their probabilities, rather than the ratio. If I am 2% successful at X and you are only 1% successful, I am 0.02/0.01 = twice as successful as you, not 0.02-0.01 = 1% more successful. As dlss has explained, it doesn't matter what constant you multiply by, the ratio is the same.

You are taking the ratio of P(B|~A) over P(B|A):

  P(A) = P(~A) = 0.5
  P(B|~A) / P(B|A) = ( P(~A|B) * P(B) / P(~A)) / ( P(A|B) * P(B) / P(A))
  = P(~A|B) / P(A|B)
  = ( 1 - P(A|B)) / P(A|B)

I don't understand why you consider this to be a meaningful number. It isn't even a probability any more; it's just a dimensionless ratio.

In your example, your result is 2. That alone tells me it cannot be a probability, as those numbers are restricted to the domain from zero to one.

If you partition the population by sex, the probability of randomly selecting a good engineer from the all-male group is only 0.8% higher than picking from the all-female group. That is the advantage you realize by selecting that criterion for your partition. If you are taking a ratio of conditional probabilities, you are no longer partitioning the probability space by that condition.