[hacker789]

Not quite.

One person says, "We deliberately handle women with kid gloves. A under-qualified woman has a better chance than an under-qualified man."

A feminist activist responds, "But you still hire more men! Therefore, it's almost a given that you're biased against women in other ways. Fix it."

The original person says, "Wow. We just can't win with you people."

[joe_the_user]

If that happened, I could understand it. If you claim the thread above is summarized by that, you're hallucinating.

I simply said that bias can be invisible and it useful to have formal methods for catching it. I don't see myself as a "feminist activist" by any means.

I think the feminist activists who do sometimes uncritically toss around accusations of bias aren't really helping. But when I notice people reading my nuanced position and hallucinating a feminist rant, it increases my sympathies. It also doesn't speak well of people's abilities to see their biases (I wouldn't claim perfection for myself of course but the argument seems involve the claim that some people have no need for formal methods to correct their biases. I beg to differ, everyone needs that).

[belorn]

> but the argument seems involve the claim that some people have no need for formal methods to correct their biases. I beg to differ, everyone needs that

Demanding that everyone has a formal method to correct biases only provable in statistics, really do go back to the "Prove that you're not a witch" argument a few comments ago. The exact same proof can be found against different color of skin, names and clothes. It can be found in parents who has more than one children. Statistical proven biases exist everywhere.

Yet, a formal method should only really be needed once the bias is found to actually exist on a individual level. Everything else would be insane.

[nitrogen]

Yet, a formal method should only really be needed once the bias is found to actually exist on a individual level. Everything else would be insane.

Wouldn't a better approach be incorporating formal, rational methods into everyone's individual thought processes from the beginning? In other words, I believe adopting the overt rationality advocated by the likes of http://lesswrong.com/ would almost automatically correct a lot of societal problems caused by bias.