> The reason why those of us on this forum can tell the difference between good and bad information is because we received a good education and learned critical analysis skills.

We really need to stop congratulating ourselves on how smart we are and we would never fall for such blatant lies, because we are such highly-educated critical thinkers. There are a bunch of silly beliefs that we witness even amongst us like Steve Jobs wanting to cure cancer with unorthodox dietary changes, that having no gender parity in tech is both good and natural, or this medical doctor with a respected career who believes the earth is flat:

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/03/the-men-who-believe-the-e...

We're all vulnerable to believe and defend the silliest things and then call ourselves critical thinkers while we do so. We can all be tricked. There are well-documented, effective methods to make us perceive and believe any number of things. Illusionists and magicians make a living out of doing this overtly; journalists and politicians do so less transparently.

Quite frankly, half the time I'm walking around slightly horrified that perhaps I'm believing and defending the stupidest lies and I think everyone else should feel the same way at least part of the time.

Do you believe Steve Jobs could not have told you the statistics on treatment for the normal treatment for the cancer he had? Or that he was not aware that most reputable literature on homeopathics is less than encouraging? Turning the stables do you feel you have access to all the information necessary on his situation and logic to be able to accurately judge his actions?

Society as a whole is becoming increasingly arrogant. If an individual does not agree with "us" that they must be somehow wrong, misinformed, or illogical. The reason for this is easy to understand. We all hold the beliefs we do because we hold them to be the most logical and justified. So somebody who doesn't hold such beliefs must be wrong, and we need to "fix" them. Yet of course the exact same is true of people who hold differing beliefs.

And this is in no way to suggest that both sides can be right on issues where there is indeed a clear answer. On many issues one side will be wrong, and one side will be right. And this is perfectly fine. It is critical in society that people are at liberty to make decisions that we may not consider logical, or even appropriate. Elon Musk deciding to spend all of his fortune attempting to start up an aerospace company and an electric car company is certainly something that very few would call a logical endeavor. It is missing the gravity of such risk to suggest it's only money. He gets emotional to this day when speaking of his time then - one can only speculate what would have happened had everything collapsed; there was certainly much more than money at risk there. But he succeeded. So we regard him as brilliant instead of a misguided fool, illustrating the absurdity of our labeling.

If you want something other than money, consider the history of penicillin. Now considered one of the most important medical discoveries of all time - the whole concept of injecting mold into one's body to inhibit bacteria is not exactly what most would call logical. And for years his discovery was completely disregarded by the public and by medical science. And that's fine - but it's also fine that people are free to pursue outlandish avenues and ideas without condemnation and judgement other than "Well, that's not what I'd think given the body of evidence available."

You're imagining Steve Jobs made some sort of rational choice. It sounds like he pretty much ignored the facts, as well as the advice of family and friends. Here's his biographer's quote to CBS:

"I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don't want something to exist, you can have magical thinking. It'd worked for him in the past. He regretted it."

Science can't tell you if something is "natural" or good/bad. Science merely tells you what is/what we observe. (with some probability of being wrong, and subject to bias, etc).

Whether something is good/bad is up to us as a society to define, not science. What is considered good/bad depends on each of our individual goals/ethics/morals, which could differ from one another. This is why spoonfeeding people information saying "X is good" / "X is bad" is dangerous, and it becomes more dangerous when social media platforms allow such information to be amplified.

I would like to see that evidence, thanks.

Edit: specifically I would like to see evidence that 1) a behavioral trait occurs in one gender identity that is universal across the majority of human culture to eliminate cultural bias, 2) that this trait has a causative effect on the career prospects of that person again across the majority of human culture to avoid culture bias (also that when this trait is strong in a gender not normally correlated that it causes same causative effect)

> I would like to see that evidence, thanks.

You won't find it. This is the problem in the soft sciences. There are certain hypotheses that you just can't test and this is one of them. Choosing to believe that unbalanced gender representations in certain fields is unnatural is just as unfounded as the parent's opposite view. The best we can do is make conjectures based on the results of things we can test but it's incredibly difficult to determine how much the things that are possible to know matter at the population scale.

That’s a very pessimistic view of what science can do. It’s true that the softer fields are harder to experiment in but scientists have many tools for that – it’s not like people just gave up the first time they hit a problem harder to test than Mendel’s peas.

As a few examples, you could do broad reviews to see if different cultures have different outcomes (e.g. the former communist bloc countries having higher percentages of female engineers and scientists undercuts the arguments that this is dictated by biology), draw comparisons from other fields (e.g. the same justifications were used to excuse gender ratios in law, medicine, music, etc. but cultural changes brought greater equality on a timescale far far than biology could change), or try to find underlying biological explanations — e.g. we didn’t need a cultural change to explain why women aren’t power lifting as much on average because there’s an underlying mechanism and there are individuals who have outlier levels of testosterone & other factors and those people generally perform as the biological mechanism would predict.

Most importantly, this could start by questioning the assumptions used to explain the status quo. For example, did the requisite skills change after the early 1980s when female CS participation declined? Lots of men like to excuse different participation rates with some argument based on mathematical or spatial skills, which could be tested to see how many successful people rely on those skills vs. more equal fields like math or chemistry.

The OP said: "There are a bunch of silly beliefs that we witness even amongst us ... that having no gender parity in tech is both good and natural."

I didn't make any statement on "good" because it was poorly defined. It could be defined as anything from the individual's opinion to measurable outcomes (society's productivity or reported happiness). I think "natural" in this debate tends to mean "biological factors" and not "social and cultural factors". I simply questioned the scientific basis for the OP's belief.

So, how can we know that the rates at which males & females choose to study and work in a given field reflects their "natural" inclination rather than social or cultural factors?

1) We can look at the rates cross-culturally. In search of the numbers relating to "tech", I found the Stack Overflow developer survey (admittedly a subset of "tech"). Stack Overflow references Quantcast visitor numbers in their developer survey[1], so I'll look at those numbers too, around the world. The stackoverflow.com visitors by gender in: India: 94% Male, 6% Female[2] USA: 88% Male, 12% Female[3] UK: 91% Male, 9% Female[4] China: 86% Male, 14% Female[5] Germany: 95% Male, 5% Female[6] Iran: 88% Male, 12% Female[7]. The numbers seem pretty consistent, suggesting that the imbalance isn't due to social/cultural factors.

2) We can look at differences in interest in newborns. There is much discussion about males on averaging being more interested in "things" vs females on average being more interested in people. Here's the abstract from a study I found on the topic: "Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. The present study aimed to ascertain whether the sexual dimorphism is a result of biological or socio-cultural differences between the two sexes. 102 human neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object). Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin."[8]

Happy to be shown how my numbers & study are incorrect or insufficient.

Personally, I'd prefer to work in a gender-balanced environment, but I wouldn't want those of either gender to be forced into a role they don't want - I think that would lead to unfair (non-meritocratic) treatment of members of the minority and majority gender. I want everyone to be free to choose their field of study and work, and to be free to fulfil their potential in that field. If that naturally results in male- or female-dominated professions, I don't think it's something that needs to be rebalanced with policy, if that's even achievable.

P.S. Interesting that I was socially censored for this: "What evidence do you have that _______ is good and/or natural? The scientific evidence seems to suggest to me that widespread _______ in many fields is natural." I'd say that social censorship as opposed to free discussion plays into the formation of silly beliefs that the OP complains about. Bad ideas are destroyed with discussion. Bad ideas that can't be discussed can't be destroyed. I'm happy to be corrected on the science regarding the current state of affairs.

References: [1] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#developer-pro... [2] https://www.quantcast.com/stackoverflow.com?country=IN#/demo... [3] https://www.quantcast.com/stackoverflow.com?country=US#/demo... [4] https://www.quantcast.com/stackoverflow.com?country=GB#/demo... [5] https://www.quantcast.com/stackoverflow.com?country=CN#/demo... [6] https://www.quantcast.com/stackoverflow.com?country=DE#/demo... [7] https://www.quantcast.com/stackoverflow.com?country=IR#/demo... [8] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.627...

1) I asked for traits correlated with gender, 2) I asked for Traits correlated with career prospects.

1 merely correlates gender with career prospects and assumes traits exist biologically that performs the causative effect.

2 merely correlates behavior traits and assumes that there is a causative effect to career prospects 10, 20, 30 years down the line.

I do not want assumptions since they make a donkey out of you and me.

Sex differences in personality are exhibited in other primates as well. That rules out culture as the sole generator of them.

That argument still requires evidence that those personality differences exist, aren’t learned (other primates have learned behavior, too – see e.g. http://www.radiolab.org/story/91694-new-baboon/), and are significant to the very complex behaviors under discussion.

The other area it ignores is the degree to which humanity’s distinctive advantage is plasticity. We can learn to do things like be comfortable in an enclosed space full of strangers – imagine a subway full of baboons! – which doesn’t mean that biology can’t be a factor but does mean that it’s really important (and hard) to critically test those assumptions.

There are also experiments (Simon Baron-Cohen) with infants at one day of age showing the differences in interests (human faces vs things).

In that vein we can also include personality changes displayed by transgender people who undergo hormone replacement therapy.

Also studies on the personalities of separated twins.

Everything points to a mix of biology and socialization. The idea of parity in division of labor as the ideal is purely dogmatic.

Simon Baron-Cohen has been pushing that idea for a long time but while they’ve gotten a lot of attention for his career, his conclusions are far from definitive. There are various papers contesting his conclusions and review articles have failed to support the bold claims – e.g. https://software.rc.fas.harvard.edu/lds/wp-content/uploads/2...

That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing here but I find it telling that the neuroscientists I used to support were far more skeptical than, say, the Damore fans here. This topic came up a bit and there was a strong consensus that the science was still too early to say anything — there are low level biological differences (e.g. percentages of white matter) but that hadn’t been linked to high-level skills, and the few low-level differences were still being studied to identify the cause. This is all complicated by the plasticity of the brain based on usage so answering even simple-sounding questions is usually a significant percentage of multiple people’s research careers.

In NZ, the owner of a Onion-like satirical website called The Civilian published a piece that very much follows your arguments. It's a great read:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/86799000/how-i-accident...

> The vast majority of people do not have the skills to use the internet as a source for good knowledge.

I’m no expert, but I see this too often. People who truly believe fake news and bot comments on Facebook. Other clicking on adds because can’t differentiate them from real Google search results. Many that doesn’t have the patience to even think about verifying the information. Humans are going to do human things, and these companies know that very well.

"The vast majority of people do not have the skills to use the internet as a source for good knowledge."

And this is known how?

The aristocracy considers the people ignorant and prefers it that way, but history shows this is not always objectively so.

The ideas of freedom of information, of freedom of expression are repugnant to the aristocrat (who always consider they know best), but these are founding principals of so far the most innovative and productive societies history has known. As opposed to aristocracies which are feudalism and stagnation.

“Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It’s true! Liberal governments always develop into aristocracies. The bureaucracies betray the true intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern, but what a hypocrisy to find this even under a communized banner. Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything it’s that patterns are repeated. ― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

> The ideas of freedom of information, of freedom of expression are repugnant to the aristocrat (who always consider they know best), but these are founding principals of so far the most innovative and productive societies history has known.

I'm not entirely sure this is true. Before Internet, what we had was mostly freedom of the press - which is to say, the freedom to spread information (or disinformation) by those with financial means to do so. This is far more free than the preceding eras of widespread censorship, where the only one spreading information (or disinformation) was the government and its agents. But it's not quite a free for all. In effect, the ability to spread information on a large scale was still restricted to the "elite", defined in financial terms.

Internet, and especially social networks with their graphs, changed that. A little money, and a carefully crafted story, go a long way in terms of dispersal and effect. Big money still gives you more opportunities, but even small players can make a difference. And we've yet to see the full effect that this is going to have on our societies.

So much information in the times before freedom of the press was spread without the press at all. The press made not only communication but also censorship feasible on an unprecedented scale.

It certainly was - but it was also spread much, much slower, and filtered (by those passing it along) on every step of that way.

It was filtered by individuals but coordinated filtering was much more difficult -- a crucial distinction.

It was like this in the time of every morning, midday and evening newspaper as well. Still not a reason to introduce, moreover to actively encourage censorship. While this particular case may be true, those in power will just use this precedent as an example, more and more. It is like a tiny hole in water barrier, at first it is small, then it will grow larger as some people would want to justify more "filtering", more and more, until the water will destroy any barrier, and full featured censorship will come. This is already a case, but still can probably repaired back, we will see.

This is the old school moderator answer from back in the day when the net was young.

I.E - the old school binary censorship "block/ do not block" - let people decide

The update to this is that censorship is ALREADY happening without explicit actions by parties which want to do right.

The strategy is to saturate the pipe.

After time on the net, the concept of signal vs noise has been advanced enough that we can now just override the signal, by pushing enough noise.

You are talking about small holes, while you are already surrounded by a deluge.

Once twitter and facebook took off, this was a done deal.

The issue is frankly one of communication strategies (and not even meta-communication, this is from propaganda playbooks).

With enough automation, its possible to saturate the pipe.

Humans are built with limitations, for example short term memmory, suited for 5-7 "objects".

You don't need to resort to explicit censorship anymore.

> The vast majority of people do not have the skills to use the internet as a source for good knowledge.

We (and others, this is not about us) are wary enough that its consequences are dampened. Shielded because we know, or know enough, what Google and Facebook are. Algorithms on top of data maximizing popularity metrics. And popularity is taken so seriously as to be seen as a measure of truth (see: time spent watching any entertainment series 4th rerun). Be it mind share, clicks, network reach or whatever other criteria that can be deemed to convey content value, "significance and truth" is not it. There is no analytic measure of significance and truth. Even less so one valid across 3.7 billion internet users (value from a quick search, not to be taken too seriously as not all networks are connected, not all content will reach everywhere).

Facebook is not a network of friends. It is a graph of connections whose content acts as bait to keep you navigating it. It preys, displaying notoriety as the utmost standard, and equating interaction with success. Reality pales against the interface of social media, that openly displays number of likes, comments, shares, friends, stats we only catch a glimpse of outside. Your social media past is an absolute, like your current weight or your current number of kidneys, there's nothing more to it. There is no wiggle space. It is a record of your path that allows no perspective. There is only that one photo, which you carefully picked. On that day you shared that link, and that was your day. That is what you are for the network, and nothing more.

As for Google, you are not navigating truth. At most, you are navigating utility, as measured by ranking. There is no truth in search order, nor should you expect to find it there. You still need to think. Why was 4chan first? Something to do with being first, being active, being inflammatory, being accessed often?

From the article:

> 4chan results, they said, had not shown up for general searches about Las Vegas, but only for the name of the misidentified shooter. The reason the 4chan forum post showed up was that it was “fresh” and there were relatively few searches for the falsely accused man. Basically, the algorithms controlling what to show didn’t have a lot to go on, and when something new popped up as searches for the name were ramping up, it was happy to slot it as the first result.

There. If you search from something that 4chan talked about, you get 4chan results. Nevermind that you don't know what 4chan is, but it does, and it creates content! This, the article says, is a problem. The internet is seen as a stream of facts and when the common man discovers they were fed crap (in their deeply biased opinion, and if they ever notice at all), they complain to the stream provider! Instead of admitting "damn, I am stupid for falling for that, I should know better by now. What can I learn? Well, let me add 4chan to a filter, or learn what that place is so I can avoid it". Google hiked for weeks to a remote location, found the densest of jungles and entered a small opening, with a small swamp in the middle. Swam in the putrid water and found something akin to culture. There, in one of their rituals, he found your search term. Took a picture, and brought it to you. And you expected it to conform to your ideals of truth. There, as in other places, fringe thoughts are expressed, both real and fake[1]. But the article writer wanted Google, the tap he let open in the comfort of his living room, right in the middle of his truth of existence, to tell him HIS truth. But instead he got doxxing gone bad, users posting in epic threads and probably someone from /r/4chan asking to be included in the screenshot, as others scrambled to archive the thread, or derail it with spiderman pics, or even pretend-child-pron so the mods would delete the thread so as not to call the attention of "normies" once the outside world knows about the latest ritual they found: blaming Geary Danley for what happened in Vegas. Most of them aren't even in Vegas, or care enough about shootings to see the bigger picture. But they found lulz to be had.

And sure enough, here it is, in the article's conclusion:

> There’s no hiding behind algorithms anymore. The problems cannot be minimized. The machines have shown they are not up to the task of dealing with rare, breaking news events, and it is unlikely that they will be in the near future. More humans must be added to the decision-making process, and the sooner the better.

"The problems". But what are the problems? "The machines (...) are not up to the task (...)" Ok. Now we know that. What next? "More humans must be added to the decision-making process".

No! A thousand times no! Don't touch information, don't shape the stream! 4chan exists, and is made of people! And you want to have PEOPLE (not the same ones, but also prone to their own rituals and biases) to moderate the stream to the outside world! There are a lot of voices in every controversial (and controversial varies a lot) source, 4chan is one of them! And the solution is to make the stream as one sided as possible, neutered, comfortable only to some?

We hold two things in your hands:

1) mind can believe and say pretty much anything

2) internet connects everything: basements to penthouses to marketing departments to psyops operatives to deep swampy lands full of dark terrors to your children

Lets ignore that, pick a select few and filter the stream. And guess what, there's a bit of swamp in all of us. [2]

After what seems like a troll comment here[0], here's a comeback from a concerned citizen:

> you're aware it's unwise to make those kinds of statements on the Web? Especially when you "Work" for a university?

This is how seriously people take the internet. And the solution is to keep out the weirdos. Or ask them to keep the weirdness inside. Good thing we (the writer of the article) are in charge. Let's just clean up google and social media. Because that is the full extent of the internet. The swamp will disappear as soon as we cleanup google, and the children are safe again.

Google and facebook are doing just fine. We are failing to build defenses for this globalism of the mind.

[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/02/how-reports-from-4chan-on-...

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/5xdacv/what_i...

[2]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/548087-no-tree-it-is-said-c...

What concrete actions are you proposing that we take? What defenses are there for the "globalism on the mind"?

When I see you write:

>> There is no truth in search order, nor should you expect to find it there.

It seems you decry action from a position of intellectual weakness. e.g We cannot know what we do, therefore we cannot modify or temper our actions.

Intelligence does NOT prevent one from falling for junk news. I know way to many intelligent people who believe ridiculous stuff for this to in any way be true.

Yes, it takes skill to obtain information from the internet, just like it takes skill to obtain information from reading books in the library(you have to know how to read).

If you lack these skills, you are limited to the comicbook section in the library, and to cat videos on the internet.

Internet is a much superior tool of obtaining information, obviously. Just because it takes skill to use it, doesn't mean that it's worse.

First, it may be better for you and I. It may be much worse than a library for most other people. It also may be worse than a library at a world-class university for even you or I. It may only be more convenient than going to a library or walking the halls of a university.

I don't think the answer is obvious to anyone who takes the time to properly examine the matter.

Unfortunately for the both of us the medium itself is terrible for philosophical enquiry so we probably won't cover much ground in a discussion framed by popular opinion.

You will now set out to prove me wrong and hope to gather support from people who already agree with you. We will not at all engage in the cooperative quest for wisdom.

Such is life on the internet.