Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 89 posts

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#71

Post by yarou »

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…

Drawing conclusions from data is "dangerous" because it doesn't fit into your world view? I'm seriously done with this site.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#72

Post by mietek »

com2kid wrote: post #69
Natsu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rin…

> 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. And if you read the entire comment thread, you'll see that they removed the article precisely because they were unable to come to any real conclusions. The original blog…

If this was indeed the case, then instead of removing the article, they could have published an amendment, avoiding the entire sell-out/censorship angle.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#73

Post by shawabawa3 »

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…

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

It does however make assumptions about ethnicity. How about just saying what you mean and using "black"

I have a friend who is ethnically African, and he's as white as it gets (ancestors from South Africa).

I also have a friend who is black but not ethnically African (ancestors from Trinidad)

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#74

Post by Cthulhu_ »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #37
burgers wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess the KKK isn't racist. Interesting... > "We're not racists," Chambers told CNN Monday. "We just want to be with white people. If that's a crime, then I don't know. It's all right to be black and Latino and proud, but you can't be white and proud. I don't understand it." http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/12/a-kinder-gentler-k...

Of course, there's nothing racist in that statement. Their actions don't seem to be in accord with their words, though.

Indeed. I think you can safely label a person or an organization if their actions are predominantly racist (like, oh, public lynching of minorities).

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#75

Post by gd1 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #74
kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, there's nothing racist in that statement. Their actions don't seem to be in accord with their words, though.

Indeed. I think you can safely label a person or an organization if their actions are predominantly racist (like, oh, public lynching of minorities).

Oh really? To play devil's advocate for a moment, why don't you extend the same courtesy to them that the left do to Islam? I'm sure those lynchers were just a few bad apples, a few extremists, and you can't judge the whole organization for their actions. Right? Or maybe not.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#76

Post by jacquesm »

burgers wrote: post #45
mpweiher wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That statement is not racist. I doubt that statement is the full extent of the KKKs racism...

> We just want to be with white people. I don't know. If someone told me "I just want to be with white people", I would think they were racist. That said, the word racism definitely has multiple and nuanced meanings at this point, so it could be more a part of my interpretation than the more established official definition.

Most racists are xenophobes, but not all xenophobes are automatically racists.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#77

Post by codesuela »

gd1 wrote: post #75
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I think you can safely label a person or an organization if their actions are predominantly racist (like, oh, public lynching of minorities).

Oh really? To play devil's advocate for a moment, why don't you extend the same courtesy to them that the left do to Islam? I'm sure those lynchers were just a few bad apples, a few extremists, and you can't judge the whole organization for their actions. Right? Or maybe not.

Yes if the percentage of extremists relative to the size of the whole organisation is minuscule (there are 1.7 BILLION muslims). Not to mention the muslim community (if there is such a thing) is much more diverse then the KKK.

This is like saying that because there is a KKK that all white people are racist.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#78

Post by [deleted] »

jeorgun wrote: post #29
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.

Individual preference (it seems to me) isn't racist, but in aggregate it at the very least raises questions about where those widespread preferences come from.

[deleted]

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#79

Post by atom-morgan »

Aqueous wrote: post #64
Chinjut wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it have to do with?

Identity. Are gay men sexist because they are not attracted to women?

Or, framed another way, gay people can't change who they are attracted to. So, what's any different about a straight person being attracted to one race more than another?

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#80

Post by selimthegrim »

vacri wrote: post #58
philip1209 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do people not say "of X extraction" anymore?
Post reply on HN