I agree that SF is a special kind of bubble, but I do think there's been an explosion of shockingly extreme right-wing thinking on the Internet in recent years... really since about 2008-2012 as near as I can tell.

Take this one that has two relative high voted threads and was at the top for a while: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/at8cuq/the_orches...

I am completely amazed that from there you interpret biological determinism, leading to red pill, leading to nazi worship, and finally landing at the far-right. I guess that answer my question why people think it is far-right, while my own definition of far-right is no where near that.

I question the motives of anyone who invests a lot of their time in the debate and discussion of the merits of various metrics for ranking the value of human beings unless they are on the skeptic side. Generally those who argue for even tangentially defend stereotypes or or metrics that can be used to a priori rank people by quality of meat are at the very least flirting with some kind of totalitarian elitism.

Perhaps this is hypersensitivity and overreaction, but I am not sure. I have studied human history. The instant the camel of a priori anonymous judgement of other people gets its nose under the tent, literal hell on Earth follows. Every single time.

I do not believe humans are all (physically) equal, but I do believe that it is important to treat people that way by default and to absolutely reject the aggregates-to-individuals fallacy here. That kind of reverse projection of statistics is always problematic or downright erroneous, but here it is also toxic and evil. Save biases from MTBF statistics for hard drives or other inanimate objects. (Even there it is problematic!)

Since you can't go from aggregate to individual with humans, what is the value of defending potential means of doing so?

Judging a community based on perceived motives rather than words and action is prime ground for problem. For example the Feminism movement is often being accused of misandry, while men's right movement is accused of misogyny. This make it is impossible for those two groups to have a conversation about eliminating stereotypes or that people should be treated as if all was equal, even if both groups share the exact same goal and only differ on how to reach it.

Going back to this study however, from a practical perspective all that a bad p value means is that there is a need to replicate the study if we still want to reference it. That is what the null hypothesis means. The data is indistinguishable from a random processes. The theory that blind auditioning is beneficial to women could still be valid, but this study doesn't really say anything to make it true or false.

If its not clear, I do very much believe that humans are all equal. Even from a gene perspective the difference are tiny and influence only a few minor traits. From listening to professors in neuro science and primatologists, it is a repeating pattern that where we thought there were biological difference between men and women that caused specific behavior, when tested it usually show that it almost always is caused by cultural factors. For example, men are not more prone to violence then women. Their higher physical strength and cultural preference to using their hands results in statistically higher damage, but the incident rates when studies tend to show identical numbers for men and women. While I have not seen a study to show it, I would expect to see the same result in regard to nursing and parenting. Breastfeeding causes a initial bias where women will statistically spend more time with the child, but beyond that it is all cultural.

I do believe that differences between groups of people and genders exist. The science is quite strong, though obviously there is quite a lot of debate possible around just how strong these effects are and how malleable these characteristics can be.

Unfortunately I have also come to believe (based on observing trends like those I listed above) that our society is absolutely not ready to discuss this openly. Not even close. Research in this area should be borderline encrypted in dense absolutely clinical and neutral rhetoric, should be discussed in private scientist-only forums, and should never be given a "pop science" treatment. (Most pop science gets everything wrong anyway regardless of the subject.) Any repeatable study reliably showing evidence for some systematic group difference among humans that has any strong social, political, or economic implication should be treated the way we treat exact buildable plans for a hydrogen bomb. Such things are classified for a reason. The destructive yield could be similar.

As I said I was once more optimistic. Recent trends (and not just in the United States) have changed my mind. Some individual people can face these things and discuss them rationally, but society as a whole is not ready and exposing everyone to this discussion is tantamount to posting a simple recipe for a biological WMD to Facebook. That too would be just fine if we as a human race were much saner, wiser, and more mature.

I think the ultimate reason this issue is so hard is that inequality is in my opinion the darkest aspect of the human condition. Inequality is worse than death. Death is something we all face and it only happens once, but the inequality is by definition unequal and those cursed by a bad hand from the genetic lottery die every day. The placement of sentient consciousness by nature into unequal vessels is such a horror that it triggers us all and inspires every kind of defensive emotional reaction, including of course a desire to hate and discriminate against those that might seem less fit than ourselves to hide from ourselves knowledge of the bad cards in our own genetic poker hand. The majority of the human race can face death, but it seems that the majority of the human race is not emotionally ready to face the greater horror of inequality.

...Consider that the orchestra post that triggered these last couple replies is the skeptic side.

> Since you can't go from aggregate to individual with humans, what is the value of defending potential means of doing so?

I'm not sure this is going to follow, since I'm not sure this more-general question is still based on the orchestra study, but if so: That's not the point of focusing on stuff like it. The point is specifically to debunk claims of institutionalized sexism/etc that get taken at face value.

Take for example the disparity in prison populations between women and men. If we believe that there are no differences in behavior or tendencies between the sexes (and a large number of people do), then it would be fair to conclude that our justice system is exhibiting blatant sexism against men. Around 80-90% of prisoners are men. This is very far from equality of outcome; one sex is around an order of magnitude more likely to be a prisoner.

But there is a strong body of evidence to suggest that even absent any discrimination differences such as these will likely exist. Men exhibit higher levels of aggression and risk tolerance. These patterns exhibit themselves relatively uniformly throughout all societies regardless of development levels, cultural trends, etc. If we did not perform this kind of population level analysis then society may have tried to balance our prison population with bad policy that tries to engineer an equality of outcome when there is no reason to expect equality of outcome.

Is the above "flirting with some idea of totalitarian elitism"? Are we "ranking the value of human beings" by concluding that men are more likely to get incarcerated even in non-discriminatory systems? I think it'd be ridiculous to say yes. And if using population level analysis to justify a 10 to one disparity in prisoners is justified, then it's also justified to use population level analysis to reach the conclusion that, say, a 5 to 1 disparity in tech jobs can be reached without discrimination.

On the note of "ranking the value of human beings", plenty of people in my workplace would agree with your statements. But then they'd turn around and engage in the very practice you describe. For instance, at our recruiting events we give each candidate a star if they're black, Hispanic, or female. If they're an Asian male they get an "ND" which stands for "negative diversity". Whether a resume has two, one, zero starts, or an "ND" is used when determining which to include in our candidate search. We're ranking the value of human beings explicitly, on the basis of our own political ideology.

Regardless of people's opinions of the threads, there's still the discrepancy between most people characterizing the thread as right wing when in reality the majority of participants were left leaning.

There's studies that show that people on either extremes of the political spectrum are more likely to see centrist or even moderates on the same side as being on the opposite side of the political spectrum. I see a lot of that happening in the Bay Area. Things like setting up more restrictive hiring flows for white and Asian men is taken for granted in much of the Bay Area when such policies are pretty controversial in much of the country. On the flip side, mainstream conservative views like support for restrictions on abortion is essentially unheard of.

I'm sure there are conservative places that are analogues to the Bay area on the other end of the political scale. But that doesn't make it any less of a concern to me.

As far as I can tell, the explosion in extreme right-wing ideology on the internet has come from the "special kind of bubble". The San Francisco Bay and the Boston activist-academic sphere breed ultra-reactionaries like pretty much nothing else, because they teach you to take Poe's Law as a standard of politics: no matter how much it sounds like a parody by the enemy tribe, you really can find someone purporting to be at the ideological vanguard of your tribe going to exactly the extremes you think would be a step too far.

In a related matter, as a matter of fact, today the noted Marxist journal Teen Vogue printed an article explaining that Bernie Sanders is overtly reactionary on identity politics, including an accusation that Sanders supports "settler-colonialism" (it's a tweet, of course), and Vox pulled a damn similar move on Elizabeth Warren a week or two ago.

The far-right bases itself on agreeing to many of the most toxic frames the far-left has, and then taking the other side. The far-left does exactly the inverse. It mostly just depends which side has "their" mainstream party in office at the moment -- the one out of power, builds a new extremist ideology based on their opposite. It would be easy to say, oh, that's ridiculous, I reject those premises and those frames, but then you find your own fellow-travelers affirming them.

If you don't normally talk to very right wing folks in your normal life (I certainly don't), you are going to read things you would consider shocking. They don't appear to me to be anywhere near a majority.

For those who would like to form their own opinion, here is a link to the current thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/artngn/culture_wa...

I think you can attribute that seeming explosion (at least in part) to people suppressing moderate conservatives, who then have a choice between becoming enlightened classical liberals and bearing the cost of that path in social isolation, or joining the more extreme people where they've been banished to (which, for its moral hazards, is a hell of a lot more fun, and a lot less depressing).

These people are not beyond help, but if you keep suppressing them, they will become more entrenched in the underground and the fringes, and they will become as fragile and bigoted as the academic marxists and intersectionalists who inhabit the same sorts of places on the far left.

The high road takes a lot of fortitude when you are a social progressive who is seen as willing to hear and integrate good conservative arguments. Libel, vandalism, and assault are rampant against people visibly associated with conservatives, at least, they have been where I've lived (in southern Ontario).

It already happens in right wing enclaves. I've been banned from multiple conservative subreddits for making reasonable centrist arguments that conservatives historically agreed with or asking questions that stir the pot in a gentle way. On Facebook and Twitter I get people responding with ad hominems to arguments which are not liberal but which do not toe the current Republican party line. Also, someone was arrested the other day for seriously plotting to murder a bunch of popular Democratic politicians. The grass is not greener, in other words.

I have not attempted to engage on many other forums but it seems to me that arguing outside the local groupthink is what makes people angry, more than any particular ideology being the driver. Angry people do stupid things. If you're in the minority party locally, you might feel oppressed even if you could go to the next town over and feel right at home.

One brings it out and up everywhere as self-justification as they aren't actually being persecuted haven't tweaked their behaviors from even negative receptions. One may call them drama llamas trenchantly but more charitably it is identity based instead of experience based.

The other is met with far more guarded pessimism and even with angry backlash tends to be in "friendlier" spaces or stressed. It is more confided than presented usually, more angry than righteous. Actually some degree of trauma territory.

These are individual situations based on experiences fundamentally. Ironic inversions of the typical and coexistence of "real" and "fake" persecution behaviors are possible.