Scott Alexander critiques a study on gender gaps in academia, arguing it ignores actual measures of ability which better explain the disparities. Longer summary

Scott Alexander critiques a study claiming that women are underrepresented in fields perceived to require innate talent. He argues that the study ignores actual measures of ability like GRE scores, which correlate more strongly with gender representation. Scott shows that when controlling for GRE quantitative scores, there is little left to explain in terms of gender gaps in fields like mathematics. He suggests the study's findings are an artifact of using perceptions as a proxy for actual ability, and criticizes how the media has misinterpreted the results. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander analyzes the results of his utility and QALY survey, discussing interesting findings and the challenges of utility measurement. Longer summary

Scott Alexander discusses the results of a utility and QALY survey he conducted. He notes several interesting findings, including a striking imbalance in respondents' last names, people's attitudes towards death, and differences in how single people and those in relationships view each other's situations. The post then delves into the utility calculations, noting that while the three methods used correlated inconsistently with each other, their averaged results were remarkably consistent. Scott also observes wide ranges in individual responses but similar preference orderings among respondents. He compares his results for blindness to established health research findings, concluding that while utility measurement is challenging, his test seems as valid as others. Shorter summary