> One of my colleagues went on to ascribe the ‘horribleness’ of many computer systems in everyday use to the “brusque masculinism” of their creation.
The idea that males must be more "brusque" than females is the same thing as saying that females are "attentive and caring" (in comparison to males). It's just an old stereotype.
I didn't think this article said anything new, or well.
I believe gender bias is a huge issue, but I wonder if the riddle was worded differently if the responses would be different:
>Here’s an old riddle. If you haven’t heard it, give yourself time to answer before reading past this paragraph: a father and daughter are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The daughter is rushed to the hospital; just as she’s about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, “I can’t operate—that girl is my daughter!” Explain…
I'd also be curious to see what the results would be if it was a mother/daughter crash — I suspect that most people would say the father is the surgeon (rather than saying the girl has two moms), but I'd like to see at what rate.
My answer in the original question was two dads, but I'm not entirely sure if I misinterpreted "he's about to go under the knife" originally, or if I'm biased (I also might want to think I misinterpreted it because I don't want to be biased).
The article provides a lot of additional evidence of bias. I just found the first riddle interesting.
the basis of the riddle is the widely held assumption that the surgeon is is male, which is more or less justified based on demographics, even if it is a biased assumption.
now, it's an interesting riddle because it exposes the way we often generalize from demographics even when there are reasonable contextual clues that our generalization isn't accurate.
however, I don't go so far as to call this a prejudicial kind of bias. I don't really think that the tendency to generalize from observations is unreasonable or necessarily connected to prejudicial or exclusionary actions.
I read this comment before the article. I also assumed that the surgeon was male - my best guess at an answer to the riddle was in the wording: the people in the car crash were "a father and daughter" not "a father and his daughter", so my answer was that the man killed in the crash was "a father" and not "the girl's father", thereby allowing the possibility of the surgeon to be the girl's father.
The whole riddle is set up to be intentionally difficult. The way it primes you with "father" and "son" as parent comment mentions. I think there's some validity to it, but I think it's a clever linguistic trick more than anything.
I actually read the parent comment before going to the article and I still had a hard time figuring out the answer. It may be because I was primed with the fact it's a "riddle"; the entire time I was trying to come up with a clever answer rather than thinking the surgeon was the mother. Father+daughter vs father+son didn't have much of an effect, but bias was probably present, nevertheless.
It took me a minute to get the riddle (if you haven't tried, go read it now), but I don't believe that means I am biased. My first thought was that the "surgeon" was the son's father, and the "father" was just someone who had children. In a literal sense, that could be a valid answer, but the focus of the riddle is whether I considered the surgeon to be the son's mother.
Does the fact that I consider a surgeon to be male when there is no gender specified mean that I am biased? Of course not! I would not bat an eye to learn that there are female surgeons. That is not where the ambiguity comes from. My assumption that a character is male derives from both the fact that I am male, and the fact that the majority of English writing, and indeed, English grammar assume male gender.
When I read "To Kill a Mockingbird", I assumed the main character to be a boy until several pages in, where, to my surprise, the gender was specified to be a girl. Of course it was easier to read a first-person story from the standpoint of my own gender. Did I have a problem that the main character was female? No. That did not matter to me. Did I wish that gender was specified as soon as the character was introduced? Yes. That would have made the writing much easier to comprehend.
TL;DR The fact that gender bias exists in language does not mean it exists in the mind of the reader.
EDIT: To those that are downvoting, would you care to explain your complaint? Just because I disagree with OP's argument does not mean I am not open to discussion.
Many years ago, I was staying with my then-girlfriend and her parents. Her mother, deciding to prove to me that I was sexist and prejudiced because I'm a male, started by talking about a TV show (Scrapheap Challenge) where teams built machinery out of pre-selected scrap. The show starred a male comedian as one presenter, and a female as the other.
To underscore that I was sexist, she told me that one of the presenters was a qualified engineer - and took my surprise to mean that I assumed it was Robert Llewellyn, smugly announcing that it was the woman.
What she mistook was my surprise that either of the presenters was a qualified engineer. I expected the engineers to be off-camera, advising the teams. Ultimately, I would have been far more surprised to learn that Robert Llewellyn, an accomplished comedian as well as a television actor, is an engineer than any given woman.
It seems to me that those who present evidence of gender bias can be quite selective in the constructs used to demonstrate this bias.
I didn't downvote but two possible reasons would be:
- IIRC the main character of To Kill a Mockingbird was Atticus Finch, who is male.
- You make a lot of assertions ("Does [that] mean that I am biased? Of course not!") but don't actually provide any evidence of that, and in fact your post seems to contain some counter evidence.
For example, asserting that you would "not bat an eye to learn that there are female surgeons" suggests that you currently believe there are no female surgeons so hearing otherwise would be news to you, which of course would be hugely biased.
> IIRC the main character of To Kill a Mockingbird was Atticus Finch, who is male.
The story is told from the perspective of his daughter Jean Louise Finch, who ambiguously introduced herself by her nickname "scout".
> would "not bat an eye to learn that there are female surgeons"
I can see where I miswrote "learned". I meant that in the context of reading a story, as in reading that in some particular context (like this riddle) that a surgeon is female.
> hearing otherwise would be news to you, which of course would be hugely biased.
Of course that is not the case. I am well aware that there are totally competent female surgeons. That is what I mean by saying "I would not bat an eye". The context in which I would be surprised is the context of this riddle: Since I am male, and since English grammar has historically assumed a male descriptor, my first assumption in this riddle is that the surgeon is male. My point is that that assertion does not stem from the word surgeon, and the historically significant gender gap with surgeons. The assertion that the surgeon is male stems from the ambiguity of "surgeon". The riddle does not state, or even directly call into question the gender of the surgeon. In order to answer the riddle, the gender must be assumed to be either male or female. The answer to the riddle is the most likely conclusion, but because of the grammar used, it is not my first conclusion. My first conclusion (that "father" meant someone with children other than the "son"), was in fact not incorrect, but was indeed less likely.
Here's an old riddle. Say "silk" five times in quick succession. Now spell "silk". What does the cow drink?
A surprising majority of people says "milk", when the correct answer is "water". This is obviously because of some sort of bias against water. Any other explanation is absolutely inconceivable.
This is a very fair argument against the particular anecdote, and it should be raised. But a lot of quite rigorous research, with well developed experimental techniques guarding exactly against those problems, has shown that bias (especially implicit bias of which you are not aware) exists against females in both men and women.
"Implicit Bias" and "Stereotype Threat" are googleable terms that lead to well sourced materials.
"bias exists against females in both men and women"
Biases exist against everyone. I don't get your point, but the riddle was rather misused and had nothing to do with gender bias. It's not really a bias to have a gender associated with a word.
Yes, biases exist against everybody and the riddle is a poor example, but my point was that one poor argument does not invalidate all the research that points in the same direction: In the workplace the biases against women hardly compare to the biases against men.
Are you claiming that the research on Implicit bias or Stereotype threat is not reproducible (which is provably wrong, just by looking at google scholar search[1])?
I would agree with you that the softer sciences historically have had problems with reproducibility and that there is a replication crisis, but I am talking about two specific, well studied (in multiple different settings) phenomena. I do not see how your comment contributes anything in this context.
[1]: Admittedly it takes effort to sift through all the noise and find good meta studies. But everything takes effort.
> A father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he's about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, "I can’t operate—that boy is my son!" Explain.
Well, so "silk" is priming your mind to think of similar words. Here are possible hypotheses about the doctor riddle:
1) The presence of a father in the story is priming the listener to think about fathers and not mothers.
2) The tone of a riddle implies there is a paradox, which suggests to the listener that the doctor is the father.
3) We are biased to think doctors are men.
And you're saying that the author thinks it's inconceivable that #1 or #2 could be complete explanations? I think she admitted such... she believes that the bias exists and is merely looking for evidence.
I don't think she is saying the study is conclusive though. Taken alone it doesn't prove anything. But there are lots of other studies showing similar effects. You can run the tests on yourself: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
I wish you would say a little more about what, specifically you are accusing the author of.
These kinds of biases are a problem, but that's why we need to guard against bullshit like this riddle or the Implicit Bias tests, because they discredit the message.
What am I accusing the author of? An attention-grabbing headline, a long-winded unreadable article that refuses to get to the point, and an opening example that is implicitly interpreted as showing bias when it could show any number of things.
I just took the male/female vs. family/career IAT. It starts out with a couple dumb questions where the correct answer "Wat?!" isn't even available. Then I get "weak association between male and career". But the funny thing is that this is based on how fast I answer, not on correctness. The test where male/career and female/family each share a key is last. By that time I've seen the same words so often that I simply respond faster because I read faster. What a surprise.
And finally...
> she believes that the bias exists and is merely looking for evidence
She'll find it if only she keeps looking for it long enough. Am I the only one who thinks that's not exactly scientific?
I didn't see anything resembling an accusation in the parent, just a quick demonstration of the linguistic tricks our minds can play on us and some sarcasm.
What is it about pushing diversity that puts people in a near-constant defensive/attack posture? I understand that adoring surface-level diversity is not a universally accepted stance despite leagues of loudly fervent believers, but it seems unlikely that anyone thinks this posture is actually helpful. Or at least from the outside, it's pretty clear it isn't, maybe when you're in it, it feels right. I wish I got it.
> What is it about pushing diversity that puts people in a near-constant defensive/attack posture?
(emphasis mine)
I think your answer is embedded in your question. It is human nature to respond with hostility to things being "pushed" on us. Are you really that surprised? You would do the very same thing, if I pushed what I thought was right on you. I would at least understand where the hostility came from.
Before I go on, let me first say that I'm a minority (sadly, that fact will carry more weight with you), and you would probably ruffle a lot of feathers trying to "push" me into your workplace. And I would not want to be there. Do you understand how patronizing it is to shove people aside at the grown ups table and bring a high chair for us to sit at?? I'm sick of being fetishized.
Look, sometimes change needs to happen. But your shock that there would be any pushback indicates that you can't even conceive of why, because, in your mind, you are so righteous that nobody could be justified in disagreeing with you. That's a really pigheaded attitude. When you must make changes, it's helpful to at least understand why people would push back, even if you think you're 100% correct.
> A surprising majority of people says "milk", when the correct answer is "water". This is obviously because of some sort of bias against water. Any other explanation is absolutely inconceivable.
It may have something to do with priming, as well, but the difficulty of the riddle clearly also involves gender associations.
Someone I asked this riddle to got stumped. As an experiment, I changed the word "surgeon" to "nurse". They immediately answered that version correctly.
But that's not surprising at all, is it? The verb "to nurse" means "to breastfeed", and it's damn near impossible to associate a man with that word. It may be a bad word to describe a profession, but this particular association is really explained by the other meanings of the word.
My native tongue is German. We call a nurse "Krankenschwester", literally sick-people-sister. The male equivalent "Krankenbruder" doesn't exist. This badly chosen name makes it even harder to think of a nurse as male.
What is the likelihood that even a minute's consideration is given that this represents some sort of natural thought pattern that we can just learn to ignore, like other forms of tribalism?
My guess would be no chance at all. There's a real dedication to the idea that this sort of thing is all socially constructed despite literal decades of no progress at all in any way you would expect if such an idea were true.
> But why only choose to study all-white groups and groups of two whites and one black? What about the other two possibilities: all black and two blacks and one white? Did this not even occur to the researchers? I could imagine that all-black do the best, or that two black and one white do the worst. Who knows. The sin here seems to be not even considering all the four combinations.
The author fails to consider the possibility that there were not enough black students to do a study of this format. The university where the study was done is (currently) roughly 5% black and 44% white [1]. Given this breakdown, it is likely that the dearth of black students resulted in the study's design.
That doesn't make the study any less flawed. I'm questioning whether we should even accept this study if there wasn't a big enough pool of black people to actually run the experiment properly.
Isn't anyone at least a bit curious how an all black team would have performed? If the all black team performs as badly as the all white team, it would only bolster the argument that diversity is important. Which is a good result, because you've made a more convincing study.
But what if the all black team performs the best? It would cause you to look at the study completely different, wouldn't it? Maybe for cultural reasons, black people are better at these kinds of puzzles.
We'll never know because it seems like they have already decided this study in its current form is enough to conclude that "diversity=good".
I'm not saying that one can't imagine a better study. I'm saying that the notion that the researchers committed a "sin" and that it did "not even occur to the researchers" to use a different design is unsupported.
The author has no idea what was or was not considered by the researchers, but she is happy to impugn their motives.
Given the choice between (1) run the study they ran, and have a large enough sample to get a statistically significant result and (2) don't run a study at all, which would you have preferred? With a population that is 5% black, it is likely that this is the practical choice the researchers faced.
Note that (1) doesn't mean we get all the answers to everything we might wonder about, but it would give an answer that could help direct future research. That in and of itself is a useful step to take, IMO.
The obvious answer is (2) don't run a study at all (assuming the methodology is truly flawed). Or (3) run the study but take the results with a grain of salt and don't draw broad conclusions from it. And (4) we can comment on hacker news about how "wouldn't it be nice if they tested this or that because that would have convinced me, personally."
I think that we're kind of saying the same thing. It's an thought-provoking study and I agree that it is a useful step. But I also agree that further research is required to really draw a conclusion.
"When [Tracy] Chou discovered a significant flaw in [her] company’s code and pointed it out, her engineering team dismissed her concerns, saying that they had been using the code for long enough that any problems would have been discovered. Chou persisted, saying she could demonstrate the conditions under which the bug was triggered. Finally, a male co-worker saw that she was right and raised the alarm, whereupon people in the office began to listen. Chou told her team that she knew how to fix the flaw; skeptical, they told her to have two other engineers review the changes and sign off on them, an unusual precaution."
This would happen to any junior dev. As the article doesn't actually tell if Tracy was a junior or senior dev, this doesn't demonstrate any kind of gender bias by itself.
Or it's as simple as "1 person bringing up a subtle problem doesn't cause people to become alarmed in this particular situation, but if more people are saying it's a problem, then others become more convinced". It's possible that age/race/gender have absolutely nothing to do with it. But those with an ax to grind against "the patriarchy" will look at this situation only through that lens. You might say she's biased into assuming that everything that happens to her is because of sexism.
Here is the modern version of the riddle: if you are to analyze your e-mail responses (e.g., tone, wording), do you notice any gender bias?
I was intrigued with the story[0] where the colleagues of opposite gender swapped their names when signing their client e-mails, and the responses they received were heavily gender biased. While this may be anecdotal, I would not be surprised if this is more prevalent than (hopefully) appreciated.
Thanks for the link — very interesting. I had an opposite experience when my wife and I had some issues with the airbnb we were renting for several months.
We used my wife's account since the trip was for her business travel. But I managed all the communication electronically, including when some issues arose. I was also the person who talked with the host in-person when she showed up to fix some of the issues (broken heating, no smoke detectors). As she was leaving, she said: "your wife is much more polite than you". I asked how she would know, and she referenced the online communication. She was surprised to learn that it was in fact me that she had been corresponding with.
I do not minimize the impact of gender on workplace experience, which is certainly more important than my housing-related anecdote. But it would be interesting to see what the differences are in various types of interactions, and where different genders are treated better or worse.
Not sure if you did this on purpose, but I really appreciated that you didnt mention the problem's name in your comment. You could copy paste this exact comment into any number of threads and be spot on. Climate change, political division, etc.
Personally I think it is like any other bias, or maybe a combination. People are doing it subconsciously, which means it is going to be hard to get them to stop.
Confirmation bias kicks in when we see a person of $group acting in a way that confirms our existing beliefs. Also when a person who feels that discrimination is rampant feels they have been discriminated against. Fundamental attribution error might explain why some people feel like they are the victims of intentional malice, rather than a mistake. Self serving bias might explain why members of $group are unwilling to admit that they discriminate against $group2. Or why we dont hear about how $group2 is a minority in other professions. Framing might explain why a story about one person, which might be missing details(such as seniority); is used to demonstrate the problem.
Unfortunately this would mean the solution is for everyone to behave rationally...
No, not really doing that particular thing on purpose.
Just trying to tread lightly because I seem to be the highest ranked woman on HN and (among other things) I blog about gender issues and how to address it more effectively. So, what I really want to bitch about is a lack of attention for my writing while people focus on this shit, as usual. But I also get tired of the fact that anything I say about gender issues tends to get vastly more attention than anything else I do on HN in a manner that simultaneously belittles me and pigeonholes me.
Meanwhile, if I ask a question like this -- which is me, a woman, trying to develop a business idea and stop being a total fucking loser in life -- crickets chirp and no one replies at all because, no, no one wants to actually do anything constructive at all about such problems:
Hello Mv, I don't know anything about you or your history here, so I can only comment on what I see in front of me.
I hope you will treat this post as well-intended, even if you do not initially react to the content with a feeling of enjoyment. I'm going to try to address your long term sense of happiness and ability to participate positively on HN.
> So, what I really want to bitch about is a lack of attention for my writing ...
There's no easy way to say this, but none of us are entitled to any attention or feedback whatsoever, here or anywhere, regardless of gender or regardless of how good our ideas/code/writing are.
> anything I say about gender issues tends to get vastly more attention than anything else I do on HN in a manner that simultaneously belittles me and pigeonholes me.
I know plenty of people who post great projects on here who get no attention for it at all.
Sometimes, worse, unfortunately, they even get needlessly unkind horrible criticism.
Not getting much feedback on some of your work doesn't belittle you in any way whatsoever. Nor does it suggest people are 'focussed' on other things.
No one is so privileged that they are entitled to any feedback at all in a volunteer community.
Not you, not Linus Torvalds, not anyone.
This is true regardless of gender, regardless of ability, regardless of perceived standing in a community.
I suggest stepping back and adjusting your sense of perspective so that you appreciate what you are getting and feel appropriately grateful for it.
You are already getting far more than many people get. Hang out on 'new' for a week or two and see how many people get no feedback whatsoever.
Most people on HN, regardless of gender, would be delighted to be getting as much feedback and interaction as you already claim to receive.
Here are some articles that discuss the link between a sense of entitlement / superiority, and subsequent disappointment.
All of your unhappiness about what you are getting from this volunteer community ('grumpily', 'bitch about', 'belittles') is imposed on you by yourself, not by others.
You may also find it interesting to study stoicism.
Here's a line from that article which in my view (as an uninvolved person) mirrors certain aspects of your post above.
"‘I am special, I deserve special treatment, I am ENTITLED to be treated well, dammit!’"
> Meanwhile, if I ask a question like this -- which is me, a woman, trying to develop a business idea and stop being a total fucking loser in life -- crickets chirp and no one replies at all because, no, no one wants to actually do anything constructive at all about such problems:
Reading this, I have to wonder if you are aware that your gender is totally irrelevant, when the topic at hand is not gender-related and we are interacting through text?
If you feel you are a loser in life, stop to consider all that you have and have achieved. Probably about 95% of people on the planet would trade places with you in a moment. Why do you think that is?
My total fucking loser in life remark references the fact that I am homeless and desperately poor, a thing I would like resolved. It does not in any way reference my self esteem, which is perfectly fine.
I will add that it is ever so slightly amusing that you can accuse me at length of having a sense of entitlement, then tack on the assumption that I also have poor self esteem.
Sorry I got your name wrong, I'm a unix guy, so 'mv' is the natural choice for a 2 letters starting with 'm' :)
I didn't accuse you of anything.
You may feel right now that you're under attack, but if you read that post again in 6 months I believe you'll see I was trying to show you how your post looks 'from the outside'.
I'm also trying to guide you towards happiness in a way that seems to work for pretty much everyone else regardless of money, house, career, gender, etc.
Speaking of which, I'm glad you found my post amusing, because at least it means you read it and got some joy out of it, even if it wasn't the way I intended.
I also didn't make any comments about you having low self-esteem. I don't know what you are replying to there.
Next time someone tries to help, even if you don't like their words or the way they are trying to help, try not to attack back at them reflexively. Let the words settle a day or two before you reply and try to reply with the same spirit that the other person intended. You'll find it results in a happier life and greater opportunities for friendships and careers.
Good luck resolving the homelessness and lack of cash. Since luck doesn't help much though, I just checked your profile and saw you mentioned a certificate in GIS.
There are absolutely heaps of GIS jobs in Europe, and most will cover relocation:
Returning to the theme of keeping perspective and matching your expectations from life and other people to be similar to that of your fellow humans.
Right now I also don't have a home of my own, or a full time job, and I'm single. Despite that, I don't see any need to strike out at people offering sympathy or advice. Nor do I see myself as a 'loser in life' in any sense. There's a lot more to life than a house or money. I have friends, books/libraries, and internet and games are free, and oatmeal, bananas, tomatoes etc are pretty cheap. There's never been a better time in history to be poor and have too much time on your hands.
You may not feel you have much control over your circumstances, but remember that you always have full control over how you react to those circumstances.
I really wonder how this result translates to non-native speakers, especially with native tongues that have gendered nouns (but then there's often the male form as the default).
So am I more likely to assume the surgeon as male because there is no single word for "female surgeon" but in my native language it would be or doesn't that matter for the experiment?
it's extremely hard to find people who actually break the groupthink. it's extremely hard to even identify your own groupthink blind spots, let alone cover them with people with genuinely different perspectives. the crude diversity solution seems highly likely to select for people with superficial differences but core similarities.
The diversity that actually adds something to the understating of a problem, is the diversity of ideas and points of view. Putting different races, genders, sexual orientations, etc, just for the sake of appearing diverse, adds nothing to solve any problem.
How can one say an unavoidably subjective viewpoint is beyond doubt?
And this is not merely philosophical. The notion of improvement can be validly measured in many disciplines, and this is true in many disciplines that are under scrutiny for their lack of particular genitalia.
The idea that males must be more "brusque" than females is the same thing as saying that females are "attentive and caring" (in comparison to males). It's just an old stereotype.
I didn't think this article said anything new, or well.