> For example, you could believe that gender gaps in engineering are 60% personality-driven and 40% discrimination/sexism-driven. There is nothing toxic about this opinion...
What's potentially toxic about this "opinion" is that, until it cites evidence, it entirely confuses what is social science and what is armchair philosophy.
One can either state: "Study X suggests that the gender gap is roughly due to Y% of A and Z% of B", or they can say "Anecdotally speaking, I have experienced the following, which suggests to me that $REASON may be at play here".
When one carelessly mixes the two together, they drape an assertion in the unearned aesthetics of quantitative reasoning. Which, in my experience, is sadly where a lot of these rationalist arguments end up.
What's potentially toxic about this "opinion" is that, until it cites evidence, it entirely confuses what is social science and what is armchair philosophy.
One can either state: "Study X suggests that the gender gap is roughly due to Y% of A and Z% of B", or they can say "Anecdotally speaking, I have experienced the following, which suggests to me that $REASON may be at play here".
When one carelessly mixes the two together, they drape an assertion in the unearned aesthetics of quantitative reasoning. Which, in my experience, is sadly where a lot of these rationalist arguments end up.