[newtem0]

What a crock of utter and complete nonsense. If you isolated the simple statements of fact then this article would still be a long and enjoyable read, but instead i am assaulted with corresponding insane ranting; accusations against huge swaths of people that are totally unsupported. So nobody googles if their daughter is smart? Maybe its because parents are worried that looks and not intelligence are important for cohesing in school and not getting bullied, for girls. Maybe the same for boys, but with social quickness and intelligence. Maybe they are responding to the behaviour of the kids themselves, who might openly worry about being smart or ugly; perhaps girls and boys have their own tendancies about which one worries them because of the small fact that they are differnt biologically, and that visual attractiveness is much more important for men? Not a single alternative is explored by this author and it should be no surprise because when you zoom out and look at the whole picture of this article its obvious that this guy is simply using these issues as a tool for popularity and self advancement. Im not saying it shouldnt appear on hn because the phenom of using these issues for personal gain and the death of journalism is in itself an intellectual curiosity. But i will die before letting this shit go uncommented upon.

[pjreddie]

> accusations against huge swaths of people that are totally unsupported.

The search data is meant to support the accusations. A main point is that other methods of supporting such statements (like surveys) are unreliable.

> So nobody googles if their daughter is smart?

The article doesn't say that, it says parents are about twice as likely to google if their son is smart vs daughter.

> Maybe its because parents are worried that looks and not intelligence are important for cohesing in school and not getting bullied, for girls.

This seems like exactly the problem the author wants to bring up and address. Society values appearance above intelligence in women. This is apparently also true in how parents see their children.

The author doesn't draw conclusions about this prejudice, he is merely remarking that it exists.

[belorn]

While we can blame society for it, we can also see the same pattern in dating strategies of men and women. Men selects mates on appearance, causing social status for women to be primarily based on appearance. Women selects mates on wealth, causing social status for men to be primarily based on having or the ability to raise money. A theory would thus be that parents that want their child to have the highest social status will among other things try to maximize those attributes.

The author conclude that this mean there is a bias against girls.

[thaumasiotes]

> Society values appearance above intelligence in women. This is apparently also true in how parents see their children.

Sure, parents who are interested in their children's well-being will also be interested in what society thinks of their children.

This data seems like a weird source for the claim, though; I'll bet the people searching the internet for "is my daughter smart" significantly outnumber the people searching for "is my daughter pretty".

[pjreddie]

I'll take you up on that bet.

http://imgur.com/a/SqCKL

[thaumasiotes]

"is my daughter smart" and "is my daughter pretty" both show up as 0 in google trends (as I search today). What does "daughter pretty" include? I would predict massive public interest in questions of the form "is Reese Witherspoon's daughter pretty?"

[pjreddie]

Yeah, they don't show up with a zero, it just says not enough data to show so hard to draw any conclusions. I agree this is an imperfect proxy and it's not definitive but I'd still absolutely take you up on that bet (conditioned on there being some way of actually resolving it).

But maybe the real question is, why aren't people asking "Is Reese Witherspoon's daughter smart?"

[thaumasiotes]

In specific, obviously because Reese Witherspoon is known for being pretty. I'd also bet that "Is Bill Gates's daughter smart?" is a more popular search than "Is Reese Witherspoon's daughter smart?"

[ams6110]

I can honestly say it's never even crossed my mind to do a web search on a phrase like "Is my wife cheating" or "Is my son gifted." I really can't see finding the answers to questions like that on the internet.

[coldtea]

>What a crock of utter and complete nonsense. If you isolated the simple statements of fact then this article would still be a long and enjoyable read, but instead i am assaulted with corresponding insane ranting; accusations against huge swaths of people that are totally unsupported. So nobody googles if their daughter is smart?

Millions do. Just 2 times less millions that people who wonders if their sons are smart. Which was explained in depth in the article.

>Maybe its because parents are worried that looks and not intelligence are important for cohesing in school and not getting bullied, for girls. (...)

This sounds more like a "totally unsupported" claim that what the article suggests. And even if that was the case, it would show the same stereotyping done by the parents as the article already suggests.