When we bought a “women’s” backpack for day trips I wondered out loud how the backpack knew who was wearing it. My wife’s “women” skis certainly seem to work the same for me when she lets me use them.
Well then she picked a 100% sample of the top 50 endless runner games. Perfectly randomized too. No valid accusation of cherry picking.
People conduct studies on new Diabetes treatments by advertising for volunteers in the subway. That’s hardly a randomized sample, but it’s what they can get. They then made judgements about how representative the sample is and whether there is a reason to think there are problems with the extrapolation. In fact, we often extrapolate from experiments done on or near Earth to the entire universe! If we did draw conclusions about the bulk of endless runners (over even about games that sell avatars) by looking at the top 50, we we need to know that those conclusions weren’t rock solid, but that’s different from saying that are farcical or worthy of mockery.
And it is very different from saying they are intentionally deceptive. “Cherry picking” is a slur that ought to be reserved for those who are actually picking data that supports their thesis. Deciding in advance to look at the top 50 may be a non-random sample, but it isn’t choosing data to support your thesis either, it’s objectively looking at a sample which could turn out to support or not support your thesis and which you have no reason to believe is more or less likely than the general population to support or not support your thesis.
I suppose you have a randomized sample research to show that confirmation bias is common, or that this is how “cherry pick” is used?
In the first 25 results on a search for “cherry” pick on this BBS - when the term was not being misused or referring to bible verses - the phrase is used in reference to women giving examples of videogames that portrayed women negatively more than half the time (see, that’s deceptive, “more than half” means 9 of 17, and why did I exclude bible verses?!?). My perception that it seems to come up a lot when women talk about negative portrayals of women wasn’t just my imagination.
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Yes. She did not cherry pick her data. She did not make conclusions about anything but the top 50 endless running games. Anyone who claims she cherry picked her data doesn’t know what it means.
The randomization is done when you create a control group who gets the placebo in medical treatments. The representative sampling is done by controlling the gender, age, fitness, etc. of the people accepted into the study to match the real world. It doesn’t matter that the ad was put up in a subway unless you could plausibly claim that riding the subway would change the result.
I disagree. Cherry picking is often unintentional. It happens all the time with people using anecdotes from their life to make an argument without them realizing. Heck, it is probably the number one biggest statistical fallacy used in public debate.
Randomized sample? No. However I have Google and it takes a while before you’ll find a result that could possibly be conceived of as a “gendered slur”:
I’m could run an analysis against the Common Crawl corpus if I wanted to do some heavy research, but I can’t even find an example of it being used against women in the first couple hundred Google results. If anything, it seems to be used by climate skeptics more than anything else.
Maybe it shows your bias in assuming that such remarks would only be made from ignorance?
Vague expectations and unwritten social norms hardly ever withstand close scrutiny. Especially when they more or less contradict the formally-defined rules people work from, which frequently happens. When people can force these things to be made explicit they have much greater chance of showing up social contradictions which may have been unexamined by some, and themselves being treated more fairly. Being aware of unjustified expectations might be a matter of simple acceptance to some people, but of refutation to others. Saying that the latter implies some sort of “perceived superiority” simply frames this as a personal problem. One might assume (as it so happens that I do) that a practically-minded person who cares about fair treatment might prefer processes which actively confront these problems - rather than merely inspire sympathy and collective rumination.
Maybe it shows your bias in assuming that such remarks would only be made from ignorance?
You mean like your remarks?
Your reply is fairly meaningless. You’re not actually saying anything insightful, even though I can tell you REALLY think you are.
Vague expectations and unwritten social norms hardly ever withstand close scrutiny.
Can you expand on this? What “vague expectations” and “unwritten social norms” are you talking about, exactly? And what sort of scrutiny are you speaking of? In the context of the conversation you are responding to (and surely, you’re not just randomly lecturing here, right, and are taking part in a conversation?): Would this scrutiny you’re referring to be the man who vaguely scrutinized the (un)necessity of makeup to a woman by telling her she could just not wear it? WOW! Such scrutiny! Much impressed.
Especially when they more or less contradict the formally-defined rules people work from, which frequently happens.
“They” clearly refers to the non-defined “vague expectations and social norms” you mentioned previously. I still need you to explain what you mean by that. Additionally, could you explain to me what the “formally-defined rules people work from” are, and your research indicating that these “formally-defined rules” contradict your idea of “vague expectations and unwritten social norms”? How often, exactly, is “frequent” and how did you come up with that figure? (Or maaaaaybe it’s just confirmation bias? Along with your own biases as a man who doesn’t deal with this shit every day? Huh.)
When people can force these things to be made explicit they have much greater chance of showing up social contradictions which may have been unexamined by some, and themselves being treated more fairly.
Citation needed, specifically in the context of women and gender social norms. Specifically, in the context onfthis conversation, do you think I was not aware that I could just not wear makeup? And that this was some sort of unexamined revelation of mine? Or any other woman, for that matter? Really?
Your vague lecturing seems to be making the assumption that women just blindly follow social norms and have never, ever considered these social norms, their context, or their importance, and if we only had a man to point them out, well, maybe we’d totally see how ridiculous they were!
Being aware of unjustified expectations might be a matter of simple acceptance to some people, but of refutation to others.
Well! Aren’t you just an impressive, superior person. You do not accept “unjustified expectations” and in fact, you refute them! You don’t really explain what you mean by “unjustifiable expectations” nor exactly how you refute them, but I assume, in the context of this conversation, you mean the man who refuted women “needing” to wear makeup. WOW! such refute. Much impressed.
Saying that the latter implies some sort of “perceived superiority” simply frames this as a personal problem.
This is gibberhis. Also, maybe it’s you who has the problem with perceptive superiority. But what do I know? I’m just a woman and you’re a lecturing man!
One might assume (as it so happens that I do) that a practically-minded person who cares about fair treatment might prefer processes which actively confront these problems - rather than merely inspire sympathy and collective rumination.
Wow, a self-described practically-minded man! I am impressed. May I shake your hand? What would I ever do without a practically-minded person to talk to me about fair treatment and how to confront the problem of unfair treatment? OH JOY! It’s my lucky day! Without you, I may never have the nerve to actively confront problems!
Who said anything about wanting to merely inspire sympathy and collective rumination, anyway? Oh, I forgot. Women aren’t good at that deep thinking stuff. It’s totally great that I have a practically minded man to teach me how to actively confront problems rather than just trying to garner sympathy and collective rumination!
Thanks so much for your vague lecture about confronting social norms, sir. Much impressed. Very wow.
NOTE: I DO NOT actually want you to expand your thoughts. I was being snarky. Sarcastic. Not serious. So, please. No more un-examined, self-centered lecturing me on how I should listen to practically-minded men so that I know how to activity confront unfair gender norms! Thanks so much. 
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There is a lot of stuff that differs only in color, but women’s razors tend to be designed slightly differently. This here would be no good for detailing a man’s face, but is less likely to be dropped or nick the back of a woman’s leg in the shower.
Really it’s just those two extra bits of plastic and a bigger handle though. If Gillette is charging more per unit it’s out of naked greed.
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I hope the irony of a sarcastic lecture on not giving lectures is not lost on him.
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I wouldn’t really consider my comment a lecture, though. I was more openly mocking him. A lecture involves actually trying to educate at least in some way, and that was not my intention at all, to be perfectly honest. The comment I was responding to is just bad, and the man who left it so completely unaware of that fact, and I couldn’t help myself.
Saying that the latter implies some sort of “perceived superiority” simply frames this as a personal problem.
Like, wtf. I “love” when people use qualifiers like “simply” so it makes it seem as if they are simply super-duper smart, even though they are saying absolutely nothing.
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THIS IS PRECISELY MY POINT
At some point, we use judgement to determine how strong a conclusion we can make about the general population based on the sample method. It’s a question of how many caveats we have to make and how careful we have to be with how we use the conclusion, not just an on-off switch of perfect randomization vs. mockable nonsense.
In my example of course public transit ads make a difference because there is a good reason to think that there is a statistically significant difference in daily activity levels between people who ride public transit and people who don’t and that has been demonstrated to matter to diabetes, so it could matter to treatment. If you exclude people who drive everywhere and never get on transit you may miss an important demographic. Now that might or it might not be a good reason to think that the outcome of your trial will be more or less generalizable (plainly the people conducting the studies I’ve seen advertised didn’t think it was a big problem).
There may be reasons to think that the top 50 games of a genre are not very representative in their monetization schemes of the genre at large and that you can’t make a reasonable extrapolation, but I don’t think there are really great reasons to think that.
I think cherry picking can be unintentional (I guess I implied the opposite). But I think it refers only to cases where the data is selected because the data supports a thesis, even if this is done unintentionally or subconsciously. When you pick your data set in advance (top 50 games of genre X as listed on Y) and apply a particular test to that data without having any reason to believe that data set is going to support your hypothesis any more than any other data set would, you could be accused of a poor sampling method, but not of cherry picking.
And my point was that, according to what you’ve said above, that isn’t evidence of anything and is mockable nonsense. But clearly we think that’s a sensible way to investigate something for yourself, even if it doesn’t arrive at a rock solid scientific conclusion. At any rate, (as above) my similar search of these boards didn’t have at all the same result. We are merely talking about different scopes.
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Yeouch. [Strikes “simply” from my vocabulary]
(This is not sarcasm, I think I might be a real moron on this one)
A while ago, my wife found out that my Gillette blades fit on her Gillette razor, so now we just buy larger sets of men’s blades. Apparently the extra plastic bits aren’t that important.
Oh the humanity!!!
(Not mockery, I’m actually amazed that they do fit, Gillette couldn’t be bothered to do the slightest thing to make it look like they weren’t just charging women more)
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The more expensive women’s backpacks are designed differently, a mans hipbelt may be uncomfortable for womens hips for example.
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It’s probably what it is, but I don’t have any problems with the female hip belt. Therefore, why don’t we just have the one kind of hip belt? 
Since a lot of people are really, really harping on my use of “cherry picking”, allow me to put in this scenario.
Let’s say there are 1000 “temple run” style games, and the main characters in each are equally split between male and female. If you select the top 50 most popular of those games, you then have to control for the gender of the purchasers of those games. If those games are more popular because more males buy them, then you have to see if the entire “temple run” gaming population has a lot more males than females. These are important components of the statistic because they can immediately alter the contents of your 50 game sample size, without the games themselves necessarily having a gender bias.
I expect I’ll get torn apart on this statement too, but feel free. It’s logically consistent.
You have told me that I am a man on several occasions, but this does not make it so. Yet you tell me that I am the one who pulls inferences from the air and needs citations.
Is it? It could very well be gibberhers.
Any of them! Those regarding female appearance and roles as mentioned here, for instance. As well as any preconceptions people have about any sex or gender, any group of people. People have no business expecting anything about people who they don’t know. I think it’s quite simple.
Analysis by practically any sort of formal reasoning? Testing for obvious logical fallacies, perhaps?
For instance: laws, company policies, etc. Actual “expectations” which people can codify and write down without being ridiculed, instead of making up “unwritten rules” and basing their expectations upon those.
If I went into a lot of detail upon the contradictions, it would be a whole report, and would IMO derail the thread. How I know that there are contradictions is that people tell me, in person, over and over. “The law says this, but you will need to do this” or “the company policies say this, but we interpret them to mean this instead” It’s damn near universal, at least in the US. Also, FWIW I hate how people here bait me about this stuff. If I get overly general, they say that I have no personal experience. If I relate my personal experience, I get either “tldr” or people say that it’s just me. It strikes me as intellectually dishonest.
Try to critique what I actually wrote. I said that this could help to demonstrate the contradictions for anybody who may not have been aware of them. Why would you decide this was referring to you? Or women generally? Obviously many people perpetuate contradictory reasoning without being aware of it, or society would not be like this.
Yes, of course I am aware that you, I, or anybody else were capable of not wearing makeup. And no, simply not doing it does not IMO qualify as “confronting” anybody’s expectations.
Sounds like a personal problem. Firstly - no, I wasn’t talking about myself. Secondly - who knows, I don’t think “superior” means much of anything. Somebody - chgoliz - remarked that there are basically two options, a person is either aware of expectations women are subjected to, or they are ignorant of them. My point, a rely to their post and not a personal communiqué to yourself, was that there are possibilities beyond these. And IMO they apply to any and all “unwritten rules” of social interaction.
What I said was not un-examined, and not a lecture directed at you. This is a conversation, and I would rather people be more encouraging of participation than trying to attack those who put forth opinions or observations they don’t agree with.
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If you wanted to know what I meant, or why I wrote it, you could have asked. I used it to qualify the process of framing. Was framing the post as “perceived superiority” a matter of deeply analyzing it? Or was it an offhanded reflex action performed with a minimum of effort or consideration? I could say “simply” to be polite and give some benefit of doubt, although the personal attack which resulted would suggest to me that “simplistic” is more accurate…
That’s all true if the default assumption is that there is no gender bias and the burden is to disprove that.
Okay, last week, someone asks you, “Do you think that women have to pay more to have female avatars than men have to pay to have male avatars in endless runner games?” Which way do you answer and how much money do you put down on that answer?
Now you’ve read this, would you change your opinion.
For me, I’d say that last week I would have said, “I guess that’s possible, probably the default avatars are mostly men,” and I might have ventured $2 on a lark in support of the statement. Having read this, I’d be more confident and up that to $10 or $20. If you are trying to point out that a 12-year-old girl didn’t supply a PhD thesis standard of proof, then you are not pointing out anything to anyone.
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so i don’t really have anything constructive to add, but i will note two things: 1) i have found that razors marketed for women, for one reason or another, are much more comfortable. And 2) i am seriously considering an angle grinder for my face. i wish i could stand hairy bits, but they are soo itchy and soo thick.
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I consider myself quite fortunate to play with many fun and skilled women and girls, and feel badly for those who have had troubles, and been made to feel unwelcome.
Yes totally agree, but I think between the two scenarios
a. Game Developers consorting to make those bitches pay.
b. Game Developers pricing upgrades based upon pure market demand.
I’m going to guess b.
