Comment by ChrisNorstrom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChrisNorstrom | Hacker News Reader

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"I appreciate pg stepping up to say something about women in tech."

"Do at least one application cycle completely blind."

Sorry but this comes off as insulting (I know that wasn't your intention), you applaud and agree with him then turn around and pull a "but I still don't trust you". As if PG can't be trusted, or you think that he's secretly sexist and want him to change his successful interview process just to prove himself to you.

I'm positive that women get discriminated in many fields, I've heard my mother's own stories. There's something about seeing a strong woman succeed that makes men feel weak. But this assumption that women are absent or less represented at Y-combinator simply because they are subconsciously discriminated against by Paul and Jessica Livingston just seems absurd. Especially seeing has how politically correct everyone's trying to be now a days. Many people (especially those running Tech Crunch events) are purposely looking for that unicorn female developer to rid themselves of male guilt. The one that's worked on algorithms, programmed since a kid, and coded up numerous apps.

Rather than focus on discrimination ask yourself this: How many times have we seen a female coder's blog? How many frameworks/api/apps have we seen created by females? Is it discrimination or lack of ambition? Take a look at the 10 industries that women rule http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2009/01/26/10-industries-where-.... Are men being discriminated against (one can argue the day care industry) or do they lack the desire and ambition to get into these industries?

> as if PG can't be trusted

Just because we're in pg's house, it doesn't mean we have to treat him like a god. He's a fallible human being, just like the rest of us.

The whole point of a blind interview is to prevent implicit bias that the bearer might not even be aware of.

Paul Graham is assumed guilty of being sexist and he's probably unaware of it. Got it.

Given that PG is a human living in America, psychological studies suggest that is statistically very likely.

[citation needed]

I can't wait for "[citation needed]" comments with zero content to fall out of favor, along with other low-effort "you're wrong but I don't have the time to prove you wrong" shots. There are many things I don't like about Wikipedia, some fairly, some unfairly, but that contribution to our discourse is one reason in my mind to burn it all down.

Certainly "I'm right but I don't have the time to prove I'm right" comments are just as bad, if not worse because, at least the "you're wrong" comments give us a healthy dose of scepticism?

Perhaps you would prefer that I say something like this:

"You assert that these studies exist, but you don't bother to identify them for those of us who are not au courant with the journals in which they presumably appear. Would you care to link at least a representative example of the studies to which you refer, so that those of us who are unimpressed by argument from authority may examine them for ourselves?"

The semantic value of these two rather long sentences being identical with that of the two words I actually posted, the only apparent reason to choose the former over the latter would be an interest in pandering to your prejudices. I harbor no such interest, and therefore feel no urge to replace what I did post with what you seem to prefer I post.

All that aside, the request stands. Do you intend to cite a representative sample, &c., or do you prefer to settle for the bare-faced argument from authority you've made so far, without even bothering, as I gather is customary in the use of that fallacy, to name the authority from whom you are arguing? "Studies suggest," after all, is rather weak tea.

Finally, there's probably a name for the fallacy inherent in tossing out an unsupported assertion followed by " -- now prove me wrong!", the way you're also doing; I can't be bothered to look it up, though. Between trying to find the studies to which you cannot possibly have referred more vaguely, and trying to do the impossible by proving a negative, I've got too much on my plate already; you'll just have to find the name for that fallacy yourself, I'm afraid.

I'd prefer if you noticed that you pointed your vitriol cannon at a third party to your conversation who was simply remarking upon your comment. Suggest you check usernames before replying.

You seem perfectly willing to stand in loco auctoris for the poster to whom I replied in such fashion as to draw your ire, so I don't really find your latest plaint particularly compelling; given your clear failure to recognize the problem with "-- prove me wrong!", I can't see how you could possibly wriggle out of more than one of those four paragraphs. (But don't let me stop you from trying.)

Actually, I didn't even read the comment to which you left "[citation needed]", and I'm not interested in trying to wriggle out of anything. Thanks, though, and I wish you best of luck finding someone to fight with over your perspective.

I was under the impression that this was pretty much common knowledge, but sure, I can point you in the right direction.

One interesting place to start is Harvard's "Project Implicit". They have a massive publication list[1] and you can even test your own implicit reactions[2].

There are plenty of other scientists testing things like whether people judge women as less competent. A quick google search pulled up a PNAS paper where they did an experiment on women in science, for example.[3]

This is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. There is a whole host of related work, testing other sorts of biases and using other methodologies. I'd suggest a search on your favorite academic search engine for "implicit bias".

[1] https://www.projectimplicit.net/papers.html [2] https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ [3] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109#aff-...

I'm a programmer, not a psychologist. I have, however, some slight familiarity with IATs as a purported measure of unconscious bias; they have never impressed me as being particularly reliable as such, given what seems to be their questionable repeatability, not to mention the ease with which they are manipulated, and the way most of the results so obtained tend to hover just outside the margin of error. I won't even talk about the tendentious nature of the investigations themselves, because experience suggests there's no point in so doing.

You disappoint me, sir. I had such hopes of finding something new and interesting, only to discover that your mere vagueness led me astray.

Goal-post movement detected!

So even if we arbitrarily exclude a perfectly valid psychological technique because it "doesn't impress you", there's still the matter of my third link. Didja click it?

EDIT: The most surprising part of the PNAS study, to me, is that people who agreed with statements like "Discrimination against women is no longer a problem in the United States" were statistically more affected by implicit gender bias.

I fail to see how questioning the validity of the technique constitutes "goal-post movement". I requested citations and you supplied them, which I appreciate. I fail to see how said exchange requires that I respond "oh, hey, there sure are a lot of papers, you must be right!"

On the other hand, I must concede that I previously failed to look closely enough on first inspection at your third link. In my opinion, it does a great deal more to substantiate your statement than the IAT stuff does. I'd like to see similar studies with much higher n, but it's hard to argue with the analysis.

You asked for a citation. That's the original position of the goal post. When you were provided with multiple citations, you decided that wasn't good enough, and so started complaining about the veracity of studies in general and finished by ignoring those citations and claiming "vagueness." That's the second position of the goal post. Those two positions are different. Therefor, the goal post has moved.

Your response was filled with bitterness, like someone who was flustered at having been proved wrong. It sounded just like a child crossing their arms and yelling, "Well citations are stupid anyway!"

Here are a couple:

http://med.stanford.edu/diversity/FAQ_REDE.html

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/01/0212/7b.shtml

This doesn't have to be about assumption of guilt, as it's not a binary "person X is or is not sexist/racist/ageist/whateverist" distinction.

We all have some biases, and taking reasonable efforts to mitigate them has worked very well in other fields, the typical example being the screen for orchestra auditions.

There are many studies showing that nearly everyone has unconscious biases including minorities. This is normal. I assume it's true of you and I assume it's true of me. It's a sensible prior, not an insult.

[1] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/between-the-lines/201204...

THAT is a really good point. Thank you for bringing it up. Even after considering your evidence as truth I still have one question left.

1. Isn't a woman, Jessica Livingston (Paul Graham's wife) on the interviewer panel and a part of the application process? It's not just Paul Graham himself.

I'm quick to defend Paul in the same way others are quick to blame him. It seems we as a diverse society are so conditioned to enforcing equal extremism that any time we don't see an industry, a workforce, or a group equally divided between male/female, black/white, gay/straight we immediately sound off the alarm and go on a witch hunt. All of this without considering that certain groups of people are better at something than others. For instance, African Americans make up only 12-14% of the population but over 60% of the NFL. Jewish people make up less than 6% of the population yet they make up almost 100% of entertainment industry executives (see Joel Stein article in the New York Times if you don't believe me). We hold up the majority to a level of standards that the minority cannot even reach. There's this stigma that if you have nice things, you cheated to get them, didn't earn them, and must divide them and share them with everyone else or else you are sexist/racist.

Putting emotional reactions aside for a moment, I think the real point is that unbiased behavior is quite difficult to achieve and requires discipline. If you're not doing anything systematic to root out bias and just relying on good intentions, it won't be enough. Yes, having a variety of interviewers helps somewhat, but people can be biased in similar ways - it is possible for women to be unconsciously biased against other women, for example.

The solution isn't bias in the other direction, but to look for ways to remove the bias. This is why in science we have things like double-blind studies, for example. In music, doing auditions behind a screen seems to have been effective.

Putting systematic measures in place against bias also tends to help with self-selection, since it assures applicants that they have a fair shot. I believe that's what the original poster was asking for. I don't know what the best solution is for something like Y Combinator, but it seems worth giving it some thought. Of course, it's not going to be so easy as performing music behind a screen.

The percentages you cite show this is a problem in many industries. I doubt that 50% is achievable, but I also don't think it's helpful to either say "these people are sexist" or "yeah, but everyone does it." Those are both examples of moralistic thinking. The solution is to move beyond that sort of thing and treat this as a problem to be solved.

"The percentages you cite show this is a problem in many industries" No it's not a problem. This is where you and people like you, differ from me and people like me. You see "differences" as a problem, I see "differences" as a reality and not something that we need to play God with in order to equalize.

So the reason why I'm not on the football team isn't because I'm 5'8" and 125 pounds and can't compete with the other players but because football has a bias against my kind? So instead of me trying to bulk up, gain muscle, gain weight, and try to better compete with the other players I should instead blame the recruiters and coaches for discrimination? Maybe if they lower their standards and we implement some sort of forced quota more little guys like me will feel more welcome in the NFL.

Hey, you're the one bringing up quotas, not me. I think I said that aiming for a specific number isn't the goal.

Football has a lot of numbers associated with it so I'd guess it's pretty fair, especially since Moneyball was published. (Assuming football coaches learned from it; I don't actually follow football.) I was actually more interested in your other example of entertainment industry executives.

I am pro-analytics: I think you should measure all the things you can because the numbers can be interesting. But just as you wouldn't judge programmers by lines of code, raw numbers about hiring are only a suggestive data point. To figure out if there's a real issue, we would need to go deeper and look for other things to measure. (But obviously we're not going to do that here in a chat room discussion.)

That's not any more reasonable an interpretation than accusing anyone who prefers double-blind medical studies of believing that doctors can't be trusted.

>Just because we're in pg's house, it doesn't mean we have to treat him like a god

I'll be the first to agree with this, but I don't believe the guy owes anything to anyone. This idea that he should go out of his way to up-end an interview process to appease the writers of a hack-job and other whiners might be PC, but it's ludicrous.

My advice to PG: Leave it for the next person. If there is systematic sexism in tech incubators, that means there's economic profit to be made by targeting female founders. Someone else should hop to it!

Applying the scientific method to investigate whether there is an unconscious bias in the selection of founders (perhaps resulting in the selection of less than optimal candidates) should not be insulting to anyone.

> There's something about seeing a strong woman succeed that makes weak men feel weak.

Fixed.

Thanks for demonstrating her point for her!

um, no, that's just your sexism and assumptions talking. I agree with the correction.

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