Hacker News Reader

Comment by astrange | Hacker News Reader

> There's a statistic - Ben Horowitz used it in a talk once - that on average an educated woman will educate at least 4 other people in their lifetime, whereas you're lucky if a man educates one.

How was that defined and measured? Or in other words, [citation needed].

Luckily, I've educated many people with nit-picky anonymous and pseudonymous internet comments, so I must have great karma.

View on HN

Hey - I'm so sorry I didn't link the video for you!

Here's it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQnDDKDiSy8

It's 6 minutes in: "If you educated a girl in the developing world, you educate 5 people, because if you educate one girl, on average, she'll educate at least 4 other people through the course of her life."

I feel really bad for not linking it. Thank you so much for the reminder.

> "If you educated a girl in the developing world, you educate 5 people, because if you educate one girl, on average, she'll educate at least 4 other people through the course of her life."

I believe the [citation needed] is meant to ask for the source of this fact, i.e. whoever investigated this phenomenon and measured it.

To me, the statement is rather dubious because even the thesis is (in general use of the word educate) loosely defined -- Does a mother educate the children, is it the teacher who educates them, or do we count both? How often do we count the father as well? What about when a foreman teaches a fresh employee, is that education also?

Unless we exactly specify what is meant by education, this statement seems "purely inspirational" to me, i.e. rather meaningless.

You should ask Ben then! He's a really smart and accomplished guy and I'm sure would be very happy to share that with you.

This is how myths get started. He said it and then I 'passed it on', because if it came from him so I assumed it to be true, 'cause he's a pretty swell guy, rinse and repeat.

In other words, it's an argument-to-authority (discarding the Latin here). Claiming "some famous guy said it!" is no more a proof than claiming "crazy, homeless Bill said it!": a convincing argument should be able to stand on its own weight, without being stated by a credible source.

If the hypothetical 'crazy, homeless Bill' said that the sun were bright, he'd be correct regardless of the fact that it came from 'crazy, homeless Bill'. If Ben Horowitz stated that 1 = 2, then he'd be wrong, regardless of the fact that he's 'Ben Horowitz'.

Argument from authority is a formal fallacy, but in terms of practical reasoning it's a valuable tool. If you find that someone has been reliable in their claims in the past, you would be a fool to not give some weight to future claims. Of course, that has to be modulated by your priors for each claim. But it is perfectly reasonable to form a weak belief on a respected person's say-so.

I don't know the source of Ben's quote, but there's a well-known "ripple effect" from educating a girl. It's largely because educated women tend to stay within their local community where they reinvest in their family and community, whereas educated men are more likely to move away to seek opportunity.

"According to Camfed, when you educate a girl she will earn up to 25 percent more and reinvest 90 percent of her income in her family." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/lessons_plans/important-ed...

I couldn't find the original research cited, but my family lives in a remove village in the developing world... and you can definitely see the educated boys move to the capital city and the educated girls stay in the local community.

>but there's a well-known "ripple effect" from educating a girl

If it's so well known then either provide us with the research that proved such an effect, or stop spreading dubious, sexist nonsense.

Seriously, this strikes me as sexist gibberish. I know I've personally educated 3 people so far, as far as software development goes. With one, I've spent a great deal of my free time educating them. Yet you come to me and tell me -- with nothing more than folklore and a spurious link regarding an unrelated issue as proof -- that men don't educate anyone.

The more outlandish a claim, the more proof it requires, and simply saying "some famous guy said it!" isn't a proof, and nor is linking to a source (your PBS link) which is essentially irrelevant to the claim. I would also say that the surest way to ensure fewer men educate people is to tell them that educating people is a gendered trait that belongs to a gender other than their own; pay serious heed to engaging in sexist tripe like this, because it may set a terrible precedent for the generation that follows.

Zmitri (the person who raised this spurious nonsense) has seriously offended me here, and so have you by claiming it has any factual basis. Please remedy this either providing proof for the apparent-nonsense, or rescinding your support for this claim.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com