Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

No, the real real problem is that in while there is some behavior that is obviously $BAD and others that are obviously not $BAD, there's a large range of behavior for which it's difficult to tell whether it's $BAD or not.

Consider the criminal justice system. Some people are obviously guilty and others are obviously innocent. But in between, there are lots of situations where it's difficult to tell whether the person is guilty or not. Vow to be more "tough on crime", and innocent people spend years in jail (or worse, end up executed). Vow to protect the innocent, and lots of guilty people get away scot-free. And there are criminals who are very good at exploiting this uncertainty.

There was a very insightful essay I saw many years ago which I can't find now unfortunately; but the main point was this: In superhero comic books and movies, the real superpower is certainty. The good guys always know who the bad guys are; it's just a matter of defeating them. In the real world, we have plenty of power to defeat the bad guys; it's just not always clear who the bad guys are.

So take the example from TFA, where the investor thought male founder A would be a better CEO than female founder B. Implicit bias is a real thing, and has been proven in dozens of studies. (For instance, where people are asked to rate the qualifications of a range of CVs, where the gender of the name on the resume is randomized.) Does the investor think A is better than B because of implicit (or not-so-implicit) bias? Or is A genuinely a better fit than B? It's basically impossible to know; even the investor themself may not know.

In the past, things swung very heavily toward "let the guilty go free", which meant implicit bias was allowed to stand unchallenged (leading to more men in leadership, leading to more implicit bias). "Cancel culture" is an attempt to swing things the other way. But it falls victim to the "certainty superpower" delusion: they think they know who the actual bad guys are, and end up taking down innocent people in the process.

What's the solution? In some sense there is no solution: until we have an Oracle of All Truth which we can consult, we will always have uncertainty; which means either punishing the innocent, letting the guilty go free, or some mixture of both. The best thing we can do is honestly acknowledge the situation and try to balance things as best we can.

Incredible.

In TFA, this precise same individual did the reverse first. It is hard to argue bias, when someone worked to get a better founder, female, to be CEO...

Yet this is dropped, ignored, in your comment.

So here we see, that even those actively showing non-bias, are labelled as likely biased still?!

If people's prior actions are no longer any remote indication of bias or not, all is lost.

Decision maker still could have bias towards men or women generally, but in those two cases some other factors could outweigh this bias, even if it actually was present. No way to tell.

The article also mentions this topic, by listing some factors that may influence decision in such situation:

> The degree to which men hold back on their advice depends on 1) how much is at stake and 2) how much they trust you. For example, you’ll be much more likely to get candid advice from an investor who has invested a lot of money in your company and you’ve known for years vs. a panelist at a tech conference giving feedback onstage who doesn’t know you and hasn’t invested in your startup.

Precisely. Yet one of these two was being used as an example for unconscious gender bias.

Why were both examples not used, or conversely, one showing a bias benefiting women?

Answer: because the bias is, that all men are biased.

> Answer: because the bias is, that all men are biased.

So, in a discussion where we're discussing the possibility that women might see anti-woman bias where none exists, we have a situation where a man sees anti-man bias where none exists.

"even the investor themself may not know"

The above fragment is what really 'got to me'. I agree that some people may have an unconscious bias. Yet from a few studies, showing some have this bias?

I hear this now spoken of as gospel. As if the very fiber of the male being, is to have this bias. So to this:

"a man sees anti-man bias where none exists."

I say -- I don't think so. Because this 'unconscious bias' theory is a bias in itself. It's like claiming all women have victim mentality, or all women are 'queen bees'. It just isn't so.