Dwarkesh Patel: belief

Transcript context

…I mean, do you need sympathy for success? Or do you want admiration? I mean, I guess what I would say is that everybody's got suffering, and only a small share of people have any notable success. If all that you knew was you're going to be a man or woman, I would say, “Well, gee, if I'm a woman, then people will sympathize with my suffering, which is almost definitely coming because that's the human condition.” Whereas to have admiration for your success is something where it just affects a much smaller number of people. I know that hanging out in Austin among hyper-successful people may be biasing your sample a bit, but I do think it's believable that men get more unmitigated admiration for their success. Of course, there are also differences in the mating opportunities that you get for being a successful man versus a successful woman. So that is there too, but again, this is something that really is only relevant for a very small share of the population. But then the argument is, “Well, that small share of the population matters so much in terms of the story we tell ourselves about our civilization or just in terms of who controls more resources overall.” So if being a woman billionaire is harder, maybe for biological reasons, maybe for the reasons of our society, you can say, “Well, that only affects a small percentage of women in society.” But on the other hand, billionaires matter a lot. In terms of what life is like for most people, the main way they matter is that billionaires just provide awesome stuff. In terms of the stories that people tell, it's true that if you go and look at most classic movies or novels, the main characters are male. Even in cartoons, actually, the main characters traditionally have been male. But on the other hand, that’s just fiction. In terms of daily life. I'd rather have people be really concerned about me in real life but have my perspective underrepresented stories than the other way around. So what do you make of the argument that employers hold defects in women's personalities much more against them than they hold defects in men's personalities? I think Tyler cited some of this research in his new book on talent that being too agreeable or being too aggressive harms women more than it harms men. I would say that it's complicated in terms of willingness to fire. I think employers are much more willing to fire men. For defects and for insubordination. Another thing on the list is a small one, but I think that it is indicative of a broader trend. For people working at workplaces with dress codes, men are much more likely to be dinged on dress code violations than women because for men, there's a definite thing men are supposed to do. If you're not doing it, you are in violation. For women, on the other hand, it's like, “Well, gee, I mean, it seems kind of like that's not what you should be wearing, but I don't want to be the person that says anything about it. And who knows? Who am I to judge what a woman ought to be wearing on the job?” But a man, on the other hand, needs to be wearing a suit in 110-degree weather. What was the high this summer over in Austin? [laughter]…

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