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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   3862 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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This is not a very good sampling method because the profiles are sorted by first name, and women are overrepresented among people whose first name starts with A.

Okay, but also two of the woman I cited had the first name "Alex" which is normally a ~95%+ male name. Bayesian statistics would tell you this is NOT an expected result.

Personally, I'm probably going to keep doing most of my reading online

Ditto, undisputably, but I am legitimately concerned about the future of nerdy young men who might have otherwise gotten into reading and now are more likely to find less productive hobbies instead.

(I'm not concerned about the future of young men in general since they're just competition, but I do feel for the nerdy ones.)

"Alex" which is normally a ~95%+ male name

This statistic is correct for people who have "Alex" written on their birth certificate, but "Alexandra" is actually a more common given name that women often shorten to Alex. ("Alexander" is an even more common male given name, but not 20 times more popular, and female names like Alexis have even beaten it some years.)

Do you actually disagree with any of the following statements?

  1. There are more female acquisition editors and agents than males
  2. Agents/editors would prefer to select books that flatter their interests and beliefs
  3. ...and as a result, agents/editors are more likely to select book that appeal to female interests.

Also consequences for defecting to the right are way greater than being lefter than average for your media universe. Like in recent discussions of University hiring where the example of political pressure will inevitably be 'one professor got depersoned for seeming somewhat anti-abortion and another professor lost they/their job for refusing to publish for 4 years, joining ISIS and making every lecture about Gaza'

To be clear, I agree with all of those, I'm just being a pedant about name statistics.

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