Mike, I feel like we are just going in circles now and perhaps part of the reason is that we just haven’t been clear enough about just what our positions are. These are mine:
1. Participation rate alone is not the sole cause for women’s under performance in pool (or in chess or just about anything else) even though many people continue to try to argue precisely that.
2. I do not think the belief that participation rates explain the majority of the performance gap is a reasonable one to hold considering the current evidence, but at the same time I don’t think it would be reasonable quite yet to dismiss the possibility for that completely out of hand either.
3. Women and men are inherently biologically different and unequal in respective strengths and skills and this is almost always going to at least partially explain performance disparities, and as a result of these biological differences performance gaps in most things will never disappear completely.
I think it is unproductive to put people in camps
It seemed to me that you brought up the “sides” by at least insinuating that those who believe that men and women are inherently different and unequal in skills (and that participation numbers are not normally the biggest factor in explaining women’s underperformance in XYZ activity) are essentially biased and pushing BS stereotypes which is dangerous. Forgive me if I misunderstood you. I responded in kind by pointing out that I very clearly see the exact opposite occurring, where those that believe that inherent differences in skills between men and women are either nonexistent or inconsequential are the ones that are far more pervasive in ignoring evidence and operating from a place of confirmation bias and who are perpetuating myths to guilt people into stifling the conversation in an attempt to preserve their agenda (the “we are all exactly equal and there is no difference in abilities between men and women” agenda) . If you don’t see the irrational desperation with which many people attempt to hold onto the “all humans are the same and of equal ability” narrative as much as possible then you just don’t have your eyes open.
This is why. When you've decided this, you are in a poor position to hear and evaluate their arguments
If someone points out when someone else is ignoring evidence and exhibiting bias that is not putting them in a camp, it is just making an observation. Nor is it any kind of indication that the person pointing it out is coming from a place of bias themselves. And to be clear I don't recall expressing that you were one of these people nor do I recall insinuating it either although I didn't go back and read everything again expressly looking for how that may have seemed insinuated.
Confirmation bias is a huge issue, but much more so outside the scientific community than in it.
While I agree that confirmation bias is a much bigger issue outside the scientific community than within it, the disparity is no longer nearly as large when comparing only to the social science community and smaller yet depending on topic. I wish that were not the case but my wish doesn’t change it.
Virtually everything about our world, from education to government to defining success and writing history, has been male-driven.
While there is validity to your point, it isn't the complete picture. The people that had the best aptitude to create and run society were the ones that did so. It isn't their fault that they were mostly male. Yes males often tried to squeeze out the females nearly completely from certain things and didn't allow them to reach their potential and there is no excuse for that but that isn't really the explanation for why men tended to ultimately end up in charge of everything, but it does explain why women had very little say in many things.
Things are starting to change a bit. But we are in a highly non-equilibrium situation.
I don't think things are starting to change. I thing the change is nearly complete (in the US). There is almost nothing that holds women back from reaching their full potential today except excuses and victim-hood if they choose to partake in those.
If we developed our skills independently, yes this would be the expectation. That is if we had 50 clones of our world, we might find a man being the top player in 45 of them and a woman being the top player in 5 of them. But I'm not comfortable with the premise.
I get your argument and there is some validity but it seems to me that you way over play the hand so to speak. I could see that as a possible explanation if a woman was only the top player in 3 or 4 of those cloned worlds instead of the expected 5, but not when she isn't the best in any of them, and particularly when she isn't even remotely close. I could see your argument perhaps explaining why a female is only at the top of the FargoRate ratings 5% of the time instead of the expected 10%, but not for why a female has never been best for any amount of the time ever, and particularly when one hasn't ever been even remotely close. Per FargoRate, currently the best male player in the world is over 25% better than the best female in the world, and this is the closest it has ever been in history. Not only is a female not the best in the world part of the time as would be expected, but they they haven't even ever gotten past 75% as good as the best.
Jasmin Ouschan is easily the best woman player in Europe. She wins a lot and gets lots of attention. It's not the same as if there were a few above her and she had to dig deeper this year than last.
There is nobody above Shane pushing him either, yet he has managed to be better than everybody else, and significantly better than Jasmin or even Siming (who also essentially has nobody above her pushing her yet she managed to get past Jasmin). I think you could better argue that Siming and Jasmin both have people above them pushing them since there are still better players above both of them. Perhaps I am missing your point somewhere.
I interpret this as you believing the gaps will approach 0 for different activities/pursuits but won't reach them--as in they will all stay with the same sign. I believe some gaps--like swimming--will get smaller but stay positive.
Other gaps will get near zero (but of course won't be exactly zero). And other gaps will get negative.
To clear up my belief in how the gaps will behave in the future I will rephrase it another way. In 2,000 years, for most things, the performance gaps between genders will have shrunk by varying degrees but rarely to 0%, and with few if any exceptions women will still be better than men at the same things they are better than men at today, and likewise men will still be better than women at the same things they are better than women at today. Our differing strengths and skills have a basis in biology, and our biology’s are unlikely to change much in that period of time.
As of course they should if there is a participation rate issue. Nobody--as in nobody--argues Minnesota kids are genetically better at hockey than Alabama kids. The "participation rate" argument is "THEY DON'T FREAKIN PLAY HOCKEY IN ALABAMA." And I'm pretty sure that will be valid in the future.
Let's at least stick to arguments that aren't disingenuous. Unlike your example where there are no hockey players in Alabama, there are in fact women who play pool. And because there are some participants instead of zero participants (and in fact we have a decent sample size and a decent length of history to look at), we can compare and analyze their performance relative to their participation rate.
We are collecting more and more data. And as time goes on we will be in a better position to make statements on the core issue we're talking about here. For now. we're pretty silent.
Will be interesting to hear whatever the data can bear out.