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Of Gender and Rationality — LessWrong

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Among all self-identified "rationalist" communities that I know of, and Less Wrong in particular, there is an obvious gender imbalance—a male/female ratio tilted strongly toward males. Yet surely epistemic and instrumental rationality have no gender signature. There is no such thing as masculine probability theory or feminine decision theory. There could be some entirely innocuous explanation for this imbalance. Perhaps, by sheer historical contingency, aspiring rationalists are recruited primarily from the atheist/libertarian/technophile cluster, which has a gender imbalance for its own reasons—having nothing to do with rationality or rationalists; and this is the entire explanation. Uh huh. Sure. And then there are the less innocuous explanations—those that point an accusing finger at the rationalist community, or at womankind. If possible, let's try not to make things worse in the course of having this discussion. Remember that to name two parts of a community is to split that c

x Of Gender and Rationality — LessWrong Sex & Gender Frontpage 65 Of Gender and Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky 16th Apr 2009 6 min read 361 65 Among all self-identified "rationalist" communities that I know of, and Less Wrong in particular, there is an obvious gender imbalance—a male/female ratio tilted strongly toward males. Yet surely epistemic and instrumental rationality have no gender signature. There is no such thing as masculine probability theory or feminine decision theory. There could be some entirely innocuous explanation for this imbalance. Perhaps, by sheer historical contingenc

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