Maybe in a general way. I guess I’m mostly just not surprised to see it and I think there’s a predisposition for researchers to suggest these kind of things because it has been made a staple. A similar example is how environmentalism is injected into a lot of topics that it really doesn’t belong in.
You made a specific claim. When I asked where you got the number from, you said it was “easy to find”, but then you gave a link that gave different numbers than the ones that you had given.
Saying it’s “easy to find” implies that I did something wrong: that I could have done a simple google search to find these “easy to find” numbers. That I am asking you to link me basic “general knowledge” (as you called it), instead of just searching for it myself. It’s a bit like the “let me google that for you” trope.
But the claim you made is not just generally accepted basic knowledge that is easy to find. When I search it, I do find the numbers you quoted, but often not together in the same place (i.e. I find both your number for women, and your number for men, but often from different sources.). And I also find lots of disagreement and lots of other numbers. And you yourself found other numbers and then linked them yourself as a source.
Right, but the 40% and 80% exact numbers don’t matter. If anything, the parts that matter IMO are: men’s most likely outcome was not reproducing, women’s was reproducing, and the gap is large.
I disagree. Example: Shannon’s work on information theory is easy to find but I don’t know it off the top of my head and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to either (some engineering fields aside). Maybe that’s a bad example because of how broad it is (I’m thinking atm of the limits on information in a signal and that kind of early super important work).
So ‘easy to find’ for me is more like a flag that I can always go look up exact details if needed (low overhead) and the exact specific values aren’t important, the broader concept is.
I apologize if it read like I was implying something. I was just trying to be casual and not go overly deep on something that didn’t need it.
Where you got the numbers from matters to how I would interpret them. So looking for an exact match to your numbers is a way to try to find what you are actually talking about.
There are a bunch of different types of claims online about this, and I still don’t know specifically what you think. I don’t know what arguments you have found convincing here. I don’t know what you think this means, why you think it happens, what research you think is good, etc. So I really don’t know how to discuss it without just making a bunch of guesses about you, and that doesn’t seem like a great use of my time.
Maybe. There are obviously sources that align (like BFITF itself).
We might be miscommunication about what “contemporary leftist worldview” means. I would not see that as meaning the typical academic worldview, but rather the layperson’s.
If you ask most self-identified feminists on the street, I’m not sure how many of them would agree without prompting/leading.
You did not giving an example of someone asking where you are getting specific statistics from and you responding by telling them it’s “easy to find”.
I don’t think that saying something is “easy to find” in all contexts implies something negative. The issue is using that as a response to someone asking for sources.
I asked you for a source for your claim. You are now implying (or stating?) that giving that source would be going “overly deep on something that didn’t need it”.
Okay that’s fair.
IDK about that. I think you were pretty casual and that my response wasn’t evasive in context. There could be similar conversations that were evasive (eg “[asked directly] what is your source?” → “it’s easy to find” is evasive).
Do you see how that would be a reasonable response if I were asking about like, converting between kilograms and pounds, but it’s a bit different when you introduced a specific claim that is not actually general knowledge?
No. I think it was a reasonable way to read the question and I answered with a valid and reasonable answer.
Are you saying you don’t see the difference at all? I asked if you see that “it’s a bit different” and your answer to that is no.
Also, I’m not sure what you mean here.
You say you don’t know about that. Do you mean you don’t know if you didn’t give an example like that? Or are you saying that you don’t know if my interpretation of the conversation is correct?
You are talking about whether your answer was evasive, but that wasn’t even my main concern. I don’t recall bringing up evasiveness at all. The thing I had brought up wasn’t about your evasiveness. It was about how saying something is “easy to find”, in response to being asked for it, can imply that you think the other person should have found it themselves instead of asking you.
The latter, more like ‘IDK if I agree with you there’.
I read that as your concern, and more importantly maybe, it is my concern that I might have been evasive. And yeah I brought up the term.
Yeah I can see that in some cases. That wasn’t my intent.
To clarify my position on the lifetime reproduction rates thing:
- I think it’s widely accepted in the relevant fields and there aren’t any substantial contradictory points.
- because it’s widely accepted, the specific sources don’t matter much. (A possible counterpoint here might be that there are few primary sources consistent with the claim. I haven’t checked if this is the case or not)
- The specific numbers don’t matter that much (2-in-5 vs 4-in-5 as numbers have 1 significant figure or less).
- The important takeaways are the big disparity and long time period.
Yeah, I put it in for one reason: there’s a lot of pressure for her to misleadingly present the situation. I’m reminded of the quote about it being hard for someone to argue/understand something is bad when their livelihood depends on that thing. If she (or her audience) thinks that marriage is wholesale bad, then being more truthful about it might be hard to do.
It doesn’t mean she’s wrong, but is (potentially) important.
Yes. I try to be conscious of that kind of influence and avoid it, but it’s still there.
No, not those exact studies. My research got a the point of being able to do that with more effort (eg I found what looks like the original video, so presumably I could go from there), but even finding Gilbert’s name took a bit.
I made some notes on the video for quick reference; quotes are my transcription:
Hardcoded title: “Marriage according to a statistician & data scientist”. The video presents Gilbert as a statistician & scientist. The title specifically calls Gilbert that, it is not suggesting that she is a layperson otherwise it would have said ‘according to stats and the science’ or something. It uses the determiner ‘a’ and Gilbert is the obvious reference.
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“The worst thing a woman can do, statistically speaking, is to get married to a man.”
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Married women compared to single women: don’t live as long, earn less, are less happy. “—they report themselves, in every single way that you can measure, sociological data for wellness, as being less contented than single women.”
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“Married men, on the other hand, married to women, outperform single men by such a measure that it is perhaps the healthiest thing that a man can do, is to get a woman to marry him.” (examples given: life expectancy, career, income, creativity, suicide risk, victim of crime or risky behavior)
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“In every single possible way, the best thing a man can do is get married to a woman.”
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“Those imbalances are exactly equal, meaning that the percentage of herself that a woman gives to a man, she loses and he gains. So she’s literally giving her life to him.”
I checked briefly and 2 of them (first and last) are from 1972. They might be relevant but a lot has changed. The mental health hypothesis – I would guess – has not panned out very well.
The 2019 paper sounds interesting but is paywalled and the abstract doesn’t mention any conclusions.
The full video:
FYI Gemini was very unreliable for me when I asked it about some things yesterday (mostly trying to figure out who it was). Also, in the full transcript, Gilbert doesn’t mention any sources so I’m not sure where Gemini is getting that from.
ChatGPT was a lot more grounded. Here’s a log of the conversation (note: first few messages are from when I was looking for Gilbert, the msg about sources is from today): https://chatgpt.com/share/69ad0bb3-27a4-800a-a7a8-32b4b21202a7
She might mention sources in her book or somewhere.
Ok, well it wasn’t my concern. That wasn’t why I was bringing it up at all. I have felt several times in this conversation like you have been dismissive towards me. My concern was related to that, not to whether you were being evasive.