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I fear there's a deep anti freedom of speech sentiment in her complaint. Why is it not enough to reply with your alternate opinion and engage in a discussion about such issues? Why such emphasis on attaining an ability to downvote, if not to stamp out dissenting views? Such censorship should be reserved for malicious comments that are intended that way.

I'll probably get downvoted for this, which will be ironic. HN is becoming tiresome with these discussions.

Because it takes far more effort to carefully rebut a slur than it does to make it, and if you let it stands as is, you've lent it credibility. We all intuitively understand this, which is why overt arguments in favor of crimes against children (which arguments do occur!) are instantly flagged off the site; we don't entertain them or carefully rebut them, and practically no one on the site expects us to. It's just that a noisome faction on the site does expect us to entertain slurs against women.

For a similar example in a different site, see https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/the-askhistorians-subre...

“In this endeavor, deniers focus on many minor and obscure details and leave out crucial context. It takes them little effort to formulate a wrong assertion, but it takes historians a long time and a lot of words to refute one. Our early attempts to engage on these points have shown that length and nuance do not play well on the internet and do not interest the deniers. The point of JAQing off is not to debate facts. It’s to have an audience hear denialist lies in the first place. Allowing their talking points to stand in public helps sow the seeds of doubt, even if only to one person in 10,000.”

like i said in another comment:

`As those claims often are not really evidence-based, seems to always target the same group and have unhealthy proponent, i might dismiss them a sexist, even if the author is in good faith and wants to understand why people dismiss his point. `

I'm not saying i'd downvote everything, but this is tiresome. Have a basic understanding on how genome works is really easy, you have free courses all over the internet and you only need ~2 hours of genetic 101 to understand than any biologic/genetic "fact" based on sociology, statistics and questionnaires and NO physiologic evidence at all is just dumb, unhelpful and uninteresting.

[edit] And if it's uninteresting and agressive, it should be downvoted.

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence"

Hitchens

There's nothing to engage with there, it's just not an interesting argument. There's a huge difference between just having a different opinion than most whilst still being able to defend it, vs. just $#!+posting like that flagged commenter did.

It's not true, you are just overgeneralizing your personal opinion on what is interesting as if everyone should feel the same way. Other people might disagree and find it interesting to discuss for whatever reason, even without original poster defending his ideas, maybe it can serve as a gateway to go deeper into the topic and make it interesting even for you, while you think calling it shitposting is ok.

In my mind flagging is the right behavior for what amounts to ideology spamming.

Arguments from biological essentialism are frequently but not universally poorly founded in genetics and biology, and when they are poorly founded, tend to reflect unexamined social prejudices.

You're right. Perhaps I understood it wrong and the quantifier was "for some XYZ" rather than "for all XYZ". In that case, it would have been clearer to provide some offending examples.

People almost never write things like "Women are biologically programmed to frequently drink water" or some other biological statement, almost always its some "sociology by anecdote" to reinforce a negative stereotype.

If it's "by anecdote" or even a straight up negative stereotype, would it possible for it to nevertheless be true?

Does the statement "women are biologically programmed to XYZ" mean "some women are biologically programmed to XYZ" or "all women are biologically programmed to XYZ"?

I'm not convinced that being true redeems any and every statement. For example you can lay out a case for eugenics unacceptable in almost any moderated forum while only making true statements.

As for the linguistic element in your question, "X is Y" in conversation typically means "X at large", allowing for some anomalies but otherwise making a statement about the whole group.

Selective ignorance is a dangerous strategy... Far better to evaluate the facts as fully as possible and find the actual reasons for and against. However a straightforward argument for eugenics is probably not very accurate or broad in its consideration. In that sense I guess it could be inaccurate or true but incomplete and/or misleading on its own.

> I'm not convinced that being true redeems any and every statement.

What does that mean?

I'm curious about what obviously true biological characteristics of women reinforce negative stereotypes about them, if you have any. Otherwise I don't really see the point in the hypothetical.

I can't come up with any right now.

Fortunately, I can come up with one about men: Men are more physically aggressive than women. I believe this is true, a negative stereotype, and has biological basis.

Pop in an 'on average' and I would agree with you there. Bearing in mind that the intra-group variance is probably comparable to the difference in the means of the groups.

Curiously, I almost never read “for all XYZ” as an instance of universal quantification, because people seem to use it with sufficient abandon to dilute that meaning. Nonetheless, I would say that at least in this forum “most” arguments from biological essentialism are not well-founded, however they also tend to end up downvoted and flagged, so it’s clear the community disapproves.

There is a difference between saying a species is "biologically programmed" and a sex is "biologically programmed". And I think there is also a difference between the things we say turtles are "biologically programmed" to do and the things we say men and women are "biologically programmed" to do. It is a lot more accurate to say that turtles are biologically programmed to eat a certain diet than to say men are better at Y and women are better at X because genetics and culture are so intertwined that it is difficult to accurately say which is which.

Is it always sexist to claim biological determinism? No, but I think it would be good to acknowledge that in many cases we really don't know what is nature and what is nurture.

Good points, thank you.

Let's not forget blood ph is coded on over 7 different chromosome and more than a thousand genes.

The XY chromosome is certainly one of the most important in hormone differentiation, but its is still one of the smallest. Claiming that it "program" people with no physiological evidence and only sociological or worse, psychological data points is dumb and uninteresting, and one of my bias is to sometime group people with their claim.

Claiming that testosterone levels are linked to aggressiveness and risk-taking in male is less dumb but not that interesting if it does not explain why (and how it disprove double-blind randomized study on the effect of testosterone-based male contraceptive https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/89/6/2837/2870329).

As those claims often are not really evidence-based, seems to always target the same group and have unhealthy proponent, i might dismiss them a sexist, even if the author is in good faith and wants to understand why people dismiss his point.

Color blindness in men is about 1 in 1 vs 1 in 200 for women. That's strongly correlated with the X chromosome, and has a profound impact on one of your primary senses. If you have an extra 21st chromosome, there are significant developmental problems which arise out of it.

While we are genetically very similar to chimpanzees and may share many traits, that 1% difference makes for a completely unique creatures which require completely different alien existences to thrive.

Biology is incredibly messy, we are still the product of its process, and that means sexual dimorphism. We shouldn't be quick to dismiss this, as it does harm to both women and men in living fulfilling healthy lives.

> Color blindness in men is about 1 in 1 vs 1 in 200 for women.

I assume you meant "1 in 12" for men, otherwise it seems too much.

I wonder whether mentioning this fact is considered okay simply because the result is worse for men. If there is a parallel reality where 1 in 12 women and only 1 in 200 men are colorblind, mentioning this would probably get you in some trouble.

> If there is a parallel reality where [...], mentioning this would probably get you in some trouble.

This is probably the point I would have wanted to make, had I realized it :)

We have more than just statistical evidence. We have physiological evidence too. We know which kind of protein (opsin) is responsible for each wavelenght. We know what kind of genetic modification can change the protein substantially (if you change the Nth protide which is hydrophilic by an hydrophobic one, you can change the wavelenght perceived). This is exactly my point:

You have an observation: Dichromacy is more prevalent with men, tetrachromacy only ever appears with women. This prevalence is huge. Opsins are responsible for colour perceptions

You have a theory: the X gene is responsible for colour perception: the L and M opsin are encoded on the X gene. You found the responsible gene.

Again, his is exactly my point: no physiological evidence => garbage bin (unless you're a researcher).

> Yes well, because you didn't have enough magical points. Other HN participants had more magical points and downvoted that comment to oblivion. This isn't a good example to show how HN is sexist.

It is. Or at least, it's an example of how karma point systems like those on HN and Reddit reward groupthink. If you say something the majority of people agree with they'll give you points, and then you can use those points to upvote other people with the same opinions. If enough people holding the power to give karma are sexist, they'll reward sexist behaviour, and the site will become sexist.

In any case, this post has already been flagged so I guess the community won't be having that discussion, yet again. Until next time...

At it's base level, the groupthink thing is

> If you tend to voice ideas that the majority of the group believes are not constructive, then you do not get to participate in deciding what comments are constructive to the group.

That is not the same thing as the group being sexist/racist/any-other-ist. It can lead to the same outcome of the majority of the group thinks various-ist comments are constructive (or, more specifically, if the majority of the group is unwilling to flag various-ist comments as unconstructive). However, the underlying cause is not the same. It's the difference between a person being racist and a person not taking a stand to help prevent others from feeling the effects of racism.

While I don't strictly agree with what's being said here (I have another comment explaining why), the sentiment being express IS constructive. The point of downvoting on HN isn't to express "I don't agree with this", it's for "this is not constructive to the conversation". I do not believe it should be downvoted.

That being said, discussing and/or complaining about another vote being downvoted is, I believe, also against the rules, so I'll take my punishment quietly.

> The point of downvoting on HN isn't to express "I don't agree with this", it's for "this is not constructive to the conversation". I do not believe it should be downvoted.

This is an ideal to be approached though, not one which is always reached. I can say with virtual certainty that there is overlap between opinions this group disagrees with and opinions it labels as not constructive to the conversation.

Acknowledged. I wasn't saying "you were downvoted because...". Rather, I was saying "This person should not have been downvoted, because...". I agree that there's overlap, and I was pointing out that it was happening here and shouldn't.

There is some ancient comment by pg that says something to the effect of "downvoting to express disagreement is fine," that people always bring out when this discussion happens. I think that should change. Downvoting simply because you disagree should not be the desired behavior, and flagging for disagreement especially shouldn't be desired.

I can't say that I live up to that standard. But, I do vouch probably 10x more than I flag. Browsing with showdead on, I get to see an interesting view of HN, and there are some bits of gold in the sluice there.