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by andrewcooke 4881 days ago
first, the apex fallacy is about, say, most ceos (most people at the top) being men - it's about assuming things given the extremes. but in the case of the tech industry, most programmers (most people at all levels) are male. we simply dominate - we are a clear majority. so it's not about bias from extremes. we dominate even in the middle.

second, arguments based on the apex fallacy assumes that power can be treated in some "average" way, so even if the top has power, if the bottom doesn't it somehow "averages out". and that's pretty clearly not a good model for how society works (which is why these kinds of arguments are popular only in fringe anti-feminist groups).

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> but in the case of the tech industry, most programmers (most people at all levels) are male. we simply dominate - we are a clear majority. so it's not about bias from extremes. we dominate even in the middle.

I don't get how dominating the tech sector translates into a general dominance of the society, whereby a woman's sexist remark against a man can be thought less damaging than a man's sexist remark against a woman.

>which is why these kinds of arguments are popular only in fringe anti-feminist groups)

I think feminists have a long and proud tradition of employing the apex fallacy, whereby they argue that men have all the power worth talking about because of their representation at the top (CEOs, high government posts, ...) and ignore their over-representation at the bottom (prison, homeless, suicides (3x), high school and college drop outs, lower educational attainment (college enrollement and graduation is skewed 60/40 in favor of women now)).

Which anti-feminist apex fallacy arguments have you run into?