Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT: 2500-2504 (29 July- August 2, 2013) Weekly Comic Discussion Thread

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Is it cold in here?:
The social norms of the QC universe seem to be more elastic than ours. The Pugnacious Peach hasn't been fired, for example.

We'll have a more accurate read on DS's personality once she's recovered from jail. Right now we don't have firm ground for any conclusions beyond what's in canon. For all we know everything she's displayed is just part of the 'tude you have to project to survive in robo-prison.

Akima:

--- Quote from: wiserd on 06 Aug 2013, 22:50 ---But why isn't it possible for a particular behavior to be unusual for a woman but usual for a man? Why isn't it possible for the long tail of one bell curve to correspond to the median of another?
--- End quote ---
A woman who is on the "long tail of one bell curve" does not cease to be a woman; she is simply an exceptional woman. A model that cannot accommodate exceptional women is a bad model, and certainly does not justify questioning their status as women.


--- Quote from: wiserd on 07 Aug 2013, 01:00 ---I am not promoting normative values.
--- End quote ---
I think you are, and pretty explicitly too, where you are referring to bell-curves, and medians and long tails as relevant to judgements of women's behaviour, interests, talents and so on. You've even written "My point, simply put, is; "behavior which violates social norms is likely to be significant."" I really don't think you can reference social norms as important or decisive, especially using loaded terms like "violates" to describe departures from those norms, without promoting normative values.


--- Quote from: wiserd on 06 Aug 2013, 22:50 ---Unless I've misread what you've written or you've left things out it doesn't seem like they were calling you "inadequate" in any way.
--- End quote ---
They explain away my competence by declaring that I must have a "boy-brain", rather than accepting that it is their sexist attitude, their apparent expectation of my poor performance, that is at fault. Their belief that a woman is inadequate is revealed by the fact that they "upgrade" me to an honorary man to explain to themselves how I managed to exceed their low expectations. It is very telling too, that they seem to expect me to regard this "upgrade" as a compliment, rather than the patronising insult that it actually is. Their behaviour is comparable to a group of white engineers telling a black engineer who had just solved a tricky problem that he had a "white brain", and expecting him to be complimented.

Is it cold in here?:
A data point on the long tail of one bell curve but in the mode of another, _in the absence of other data_, is more likely to belong to the population described by the second curve.

Akima would of course still be a woman if she were 6'8" tall, but if all you know is that someone's 6'8", the logical guess is clear.

What's not clear is why someone should care, and why they shouldn't simply ask, if there's some reason the difference is important.

It is more than a little adventurous to draw conclusions about what female AIs are like from the three examples we've seen, though. Reasoning from bell curves is not a good tool for overanalyzing a comic, since entertainment value requires making new characters different from the existing ones.

wiserd:

--- Quote from: Akima on 07 Aug 2013, 03:31 ---A woman who is on the "long tail of one bell curve" does not cease to be a woman; she is simply an exceptional woman. A model that cannot accommodate exceptional women is a bad model, and certainly does not justify questioning their status as women.

--- End quote ---

You are misrepresenting what I've written. Continually. When you can accurately paraphrase my expressed views, I'll be happy to continue the discussion. Before that happens, further response is likely wasted effort. I really don't want to discuss your coworkers motivations, which are obscure to me, but even they weren't questioning your biological sex. As for whether "Male" is an acceptable substitute for "masculine," it's not if we're to split hairs. But I'm skeptical whether you would have accepted the notion that you might have a masculinized brain, or masculine interests, but female sex. Feel free to correct me if that would have been acceptable to you.

You have claimed I said that May cannot be female because of how she acted. I have not claimed this. I do think her behavior is anomalous, particularly for her (chosen?) sex. Antisocial personality disorder is not evenly distributed among genders.

And to bring this conversation closer to the original track; what about AI? I am not saying that any character cannot be a particular sex (to the extent that even applies to a machine.) I am saying that if an AI were of sterotypically masculine behavior but apparent female sexual presentation that this is noteworthy in understanding the character. 


--- Quote from: Akima on 07 Aug 2013, 03:31 ---
--- Quote from: wiserd on 07 Aug 2013, 01:00 ---I am not promoting normative values.
--- End quote ---
I think you are, and pretty explicitly too, where you are referring to bell-curves, and medians and long tails as relevant to judgements of women's behaviour, interests, talents and so on. You've even written "My point, simply put, is; "behavior which violates social norms is likely to be significant."" I really don't think you can reference social norms as important or decisive, especially using loaded terms like "violates" to describe departures from those norms, without promoting normative values.

--- End quote ---

You seem to be saying that I can't acknowledge that social norms exist without supporting the existence of those norms? Really? So a person who says that the South was segregated by Jim Crow laws is supporting Jim Crow? A person who notes that men have, on average, more muscle mass than women is inevitably asserting that all men SHOULD have more muscle mass? Or is out of line in wondering (though not conclusively stating on that evidence alone) if the East German Swim Team might have taken steroids because of their muscularity?  I'm simply not buying it.

I think that bell curves, medians and long tails are relevant to understanding ANYONE'S behavior. Not women exclusively.

I believe that I can think about violating norms without promoting those norms. I won't speak for what other people are capable of. Though this seems like another example of picking at semantics to try and disregard someone else's view. You can substitute 'transgress' for 'violates' if that works better for you.  If it's my phrasing you object to, is there some rephrasing of my statement using less 'loaded terms' that you would accept?


--- Quote from: Akima on 07 Aug 2013, 03:31 ---
--- Quote from: wiserd on 06 Aug 2013, 22:50 ---Unless I've misread what you've written or you've left things out it doesn't seem like they were calling you "inadequate" in any way.
--- End quote ---
They explain away my competence by declaring that I must have a "boy-brain", rather than accepting that it is their sexist attitude, their apparent expectation of my poor performance, that is at fault. Their belief that a woman is inadequate is revealed by the fact that they "upgrade" me to an honorary man to explain to themselves how I managed to exceed their low expectations. It is very telling too, that they seem to expect me to regard this "upgrade" as a compliment, rather than the patronising insult that it actually is. Their behavior is comparable to a group of white engineers telling a black engineer who had just solved a tricky problem that he had a "white brain", and expecting him to be complimented.

--- End quote ---

This explains why you find what they said offensive. It does not explain why you believed they were calling you "inadequate." They did not explain away your competence. They clearly recognized that you were competent.  You've said that a model should accommodate exceptional results. But I'm skeptical that you would have been much more approving of their comments if they had called you "exceptional" and then added "for a woman." I could be wrong, but I suspect that it is their belief that men are (biologically) better, on average, at some particular task than women, on average, that offends you. If there's some phrasing of this belief that you would find palatable, feel free to put it forward.

I'd rather not engage the particulars of your experience. I don't know your coworkers. I'm not here to justify their beliefs. I personally suspect that the disparity between women and men on technical issues, to the limited extent it exists in American culture, is primarily a matter of motivation rather than capacity. I think this motivation may have a partly biological basis, that might be counteracted socially if it needs to be.  But if the result of this discussion is that I'm supposed to believe that women and men within a given culture are identical in every regard, irrespective of any evidence, then I'm simply not buying in. Call me whatever names you want to associate me with your chosen outgroup.

There are biological differences between average male and female brains in addition to culturally promoted male and female gender roles. Such differences are likely dwarfed by cultural influences, but they can be demonstrated to exist. And while both women and men have, say, Testosterone and DHT their effects are commonly called masculinizing, because they are associated with male primary and secondary sexual characteristics.  I object to any social paradigm where male and female differences and their basis cannot be courteously discussed. Because it basically amounts to someone saying "well, these topics, we just aren't allowed to THINK about..."


<mod>Edited to display quoting correctly</mod>

pwhodges:

--- Quote from: wiserd on 07 Aug 2013, 12:36 ---I object to any social paradigm where male and female differences and their basis cannot be courteously discussed. Because it basically amounts to someone saying "well, these topics, we just aren't allowed to THINK about..."
--- End quote ---

Sometimes, though, in order to discuss something in a useful way, a degree of care in expression and even exact choice of subjects which you might argue to be beyond necessity is in fact the best way to go.

It may not be easy to do, I admit, and it's certainly not easy to umpire!


--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 07 Aug 2013, 03:51 ---Reasoning from bell curves is not a good tool for overanalyzing a comic, since entertainment value requires making new characters different from the existing ones.

--- End quote ---

Indeed - one of the first things to grasp in statistics is that it is all about populations, and never about individuals (this is where I just can't get along with Asimov's Foundation series in the end).

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