Item — HN Reader

> But where were the hard numbers that pointed to bias, be it in the selection of professionals or the publication process, skeptics asked? ... Maybe it was the case that liberals simply wanted to become professors more often than conservatives.

Interesting. I wonder if those same people would explain a lack of gender diversity in tech as "women aren't interested in tech", or an analogous feeling in other fields? I guess I do not have an understanding for how much of that reaction is a general attitude towards diversity versus a reactionary stance in regards to the suggestion of a lack of diversity in one's own domain of work/expertise/culture/experience.

> But the percentages varied. Regarding economic affairs, approximately nineteen per cent called themselves moderates, and eighteen per cent, conservative. On foreign policy, just over twenty-one per cent were moderate, and ten per cent, conservative. It was only on the social-issues scale that the numbers reflected Haidt’s fears: more than ninety per cent reported themselves to be liberal, and just under four per cent, conservative.

Certainly the social issues are more extreme, but having a ~70% to 10% ratio of liberal to conservative thinking for foreign policy is still very lopsided. I think all three categories would be considered too lopsided, not just the last one.

2 comments

>Interesting. I wonder if those same people would explain a lack of gender diversity in tech as "women aren't interested in tech"?

Contrary to the declaration of independence, it is not self-evident that all people are equal. We can say that the lack of women in tech is primarily a result of cultural reasons because we have evidence that there is minimal innate, relevent, difference. We have not shown this to be the case with political parties. Furthermore, we have reason to believe that this is not the case, because political parties carry with them values and ideologies.

>Certainly the social issues are more extreme, but having a ~70% to 10% ratio of liberal to conservative thinking for foreign policy is still very lopsided. I think one all three categories would be too lopsided, not just the last one.

Is there a reason that 50%-50% is ideal? Consider the climate change debate; I do not consider it a problem that the scientific community is lopsided on this issue. Simmilarly, it may be the case that an understanding of these fields tends to make people lean liberal.

You're confusing political belief with scientific opinion. There is nothing wrong with nearly everyone holding one scientific opinion. I would say there is something wrong with a lack of diversity (political or otherwise).

I don't think there's necessarily a big difference. Let's take the political belief "women should be allowed to vote". Do you truly believe that it's valuable to have a diverse set of opinions on that subject?

False equivalence in scientific opinion isn't any different from the political sphere, its just that many political issues are actually more highly debated because of a lack of hard science behind them.

Strawman; it is not the "conservative" position of a significant sized group of people that "women should not be allowed to vote". Non-zero, sure, but before you get too excited about that "concession" bear in mind I can find examples of people who think men should not be allowed to vote, in academia.

Further, still a flawed argument; part of the main point of science is to consider questions that may be emotionally loaded or painful in a scientific manner. Forbidding certain streams of thought because it could conceivably be used to support a politically unpopular position is unscientific. At the very least you ought to acknowledge that is the case, rather than try to pretend that you have not somehow left science behind, and pretend that you will suffer no consequences from that because of the sheer, self-evident rightness of your beliefs. (And if those last six words don't at least make you pause, you don't have a scientific mind.)

I would agree that we would like the values of scientist to mirror the values of the general public (although it is easy to see how different values may lead to a different likelihood of becoming a scientist).

However political beliefs are a combination of values and factual beliefs. For example, consider gun control. Part of the debate is a value debate on who has the responsibility of protecting the people (if you believe that it is the government's responsibility, you are less likely to be pro gun than if you believe it is an individuals responsibility). However, there is also a factual debate on if private ownership of guns actually protects people.

If we consider the academic ecosystem from an evolutionary standpoint, the most important thing to recognize is that objective truth is not the measure of fitness, the ability to command a budget is.

Those academics survive who can sell, who can get grants and budgets, who can get paid and who can hire. It is nice to believe that these abilities are correlated with the ability to discover new truths. Over the longer term it certainly is and in hard sciences moreso, but in the short and medium term and in subjects as loosey goosey as social psychology (where being wrong has virtually no measurable consequence) it is certainly less so.

The conclusion then might be that liberals, rather than being better truth seekers, are simply better at funnelling public money through their offices.

That nearly sounds like it uses the Efficient Markets Hypothesis.

This generalizes - if we view markets ( and this are one, I think - of a sort ) as control-feedback systems, everything is easy until you get large lags and higher uncertainty due to lag. If the lag itself is highly uncertain, abandon hope all ye who enter here.

The hard part is always separating the stories we tell ourselves about things from the nature of the things themselves.

I think if you read the article more closely using those examples was supposed to be pointing out lazy thinking, not actually advocating those as legitimate answers.

Perhaps, though I did more than simply skim the article. If that was the intent, the author probably could have done a better job of making that point.