2y ago

Murdered by numbers.

88 comments

Well to a certain degree I guess. They're never going to be as equal as numbers can. What is even meant by men and women being "equal"? Equality of opportunity?
- this comes up in math too. there are many situations where we don’t need mathematical objects to be platonic copies to treat them “equally” so we work with equivalence relations instead.
  
  but obviously there is a bigger difference between men and women, than between men and women themselves. Quite sure that's the relevant bit...
  
  there is a bigger difference between men and women, than between men and women themselves.
  This is completely unquantifiable and therefore unprovable
  
  what about physical strength and the inclination for socialization? These traits vary on both genders, but generally all men are physically strong, all women are physically weak(er); and generally all women have inclination for socialization, all men have less inclination for socialization.
  Other traits that largely vary within one gender, probably also largely vary between genders, so these cancel out.
  I might be wrong about this last point though, but to just shrug this off as if this is taken completely out of the blue and rarely intuitively observed in day-to-day life, is not fair.
  
  intuitively observed
  This is the biggest problem. "Intuitive observation" means the evidence is anecdotal, and without "fine tuning." For example, you observe that in your experience women tend to be more social than men. My experience might be the opposite. And even if our experiences are the same, we can't assume that those differences are inherent. This is because many perceived differences between genders are actually due to socialization: women are expected to engage with others, to be subservient to others in a lot of ways, to be emotionally engaged. Men are expected to be self reliant and emotionally disengaged. This does not at all suggest a difference in inherent quality - it's due to society.
  My major point still stands: the number of qualities that people have and their possible variations are practically infinite, and therefore immeasurable. Something immeasurable is unquantifiable. Thus, to say that there are more differences between genders than within individuals of a gender is an absolutely unprovable claim.
  And you might insist on not being so scientific and relying on your anecdotal experience, but these ideas have profound impacts on those around us. Thus we have a responsibility to others to examine these biases and ideas with a fine toothed comb
  
  This is the biggest problem. “Intuitive observation” means the evidence is anecdotal,........
  I agree, I just wanted to point out that I felt like you shrugged away the example as if there is not even an intuitively observed phenomenon.
  BUT back to the point. I may not have proof that women are more sociable, but it's damn plausible from a evolutionary perspective, women care for children -> thus more sociable inclined to children. So what is your response to this and the trait of physical strength of men? These are pretty obvious no? Do you acknowledge this difference to be more pronounced between genders than within one gender?
  
  Do you acknowledge this difference to be more pronounced between genders than within one gender?
  This question really isn't relevant on its own. You claimed:
  there is a bigger difference between men and women, than between men and women themselves
  To prove this statement it's not enough to argue that there are singular differences from men and women, nor that that difference is more pronounced cross-gender than within gender. To prove this statement would require a summation of all qualities and differences both between and within genders, or at least the majority, then comparison of those summations. And you would have to prove that those differences are inherent and not instilled through cultural socialization. Hence it being a massive assumption, and unprovable
  
  thats true, then I was wrong. I would however still very much bet my money on the hypothesis that it is.
  
  Fair enough dude
  
  You make up a “just so” story by taking something that you observe in our life’s today and construct a reason why it’s supposedly biologically determined.
  
  Time and time again studies that specifically research differences in women and men find that in-group differences are bigger than between-group differences. There are really very few traits were it is different.
  Still people blow these differences out of proportion because some people have a huge interest in keeping the illusion that these two groups of people are different.
  
  Why would it be obvious? You can just as easy postulate the opposite. What are we measuring as difference?
  
  2 kidneys, a liver, a heart, a brain.
  Looks exactly the same to me. What are these "big differences" you've invented?
  
  I said bigger, not big.
  
  Already reduced to splitting hairs, huh? Clearly your "point" is substantive and valuable.
  
  treat them equally? But you probably don't want to give menstrual items to a man
  
  Treating someone equally is to give them equal value and respect as you'd give anyone else, it's to not devalue them based on gender, race, etc. It's the same as it's been since Dr. King talked about the content of someone's character instead of the color of their skin.
  
  sure, no one is denying that. I was just jumping in on specifics of how that would look like, for example, when giving certain items.
  
  that's what I meant. You wouldn't give them to whoever not needed them. I called them man, you called them people without uterus. In other words, you don't want to treat all equally.
  
  there’s no equivalence here.
  So you would give menstrual products to people with a uterus but don't say anything about not giving menstrual products to people without a uterus?
  But would you? If you do not, wouldn't that make you treat people unequally, in some sense?