Background
I've been meaning to test the EQ-SQ theory for a while, but it got put on pause while I'm asking Simon Baron-Cohen to comment on my test idea.
However, I've noticed that to many people, the point of EQ-SQ theory seems to be that it provides a theory for how sex differences in technical occupational interests could arise, and I suspect people mostly wouldn't care about a debunking of the specific claims of EQ-SQ theory but instead more about whether men are inherently attracted to computers due to something vaguely along the lines of the rationality or objectivity associated with them.
So that made me wonder if I could find out where occupational interests actually come from, and in turn make progress on understanding the answer to this question. And that made me think about my own path into tech. I could come with multiple models, but for now, let's focus on one of them: ideology.
I think I've always had a strong appreciation for invention as a driver of progress, and have felt that computers are one of the most general ways of inventing things, with the potential to become artificial general intelligence which could solve many problems (though I have become more negative in my attitudes towards AGI over time). This attitude - an optimism about technological progress - could be interpreted as an ideology that I will call technophilia.
It seems intuitively plausible that technophilia might get people into tech. Both logically, and in my own case, and in certain important local community cases (MIRI opposes capabilities research due to fear about AGI, but on the other hand some people credit Yudkowsky's singularitarianism to motivate them to working on AI).
Furthermore, there might be some other indicators of this. There's a stereotype of shady finance people explaining why finance is the most important thing while ruining everything, which would seem to reflect a disagreement between finance people and the general public about the importance of finance, and therefore probably also a correlation between finance interest and capitalist ideology.
So between technophilia and capitalism, it seems like we already have some good potential examples. Of course, correlation != causation, so I don't think we can conclude anything just from showing such correlations. But the evidence is suggestive enough that it motivates me to get started on this.
Before we can even quantify the correlation or start robustly investigating the causation, I believe we need a strong measure of the phenomena under investigation. I'm currently reasonably satisfied with the measures of vocational interests that are available, but I would like to have a proper measure of vocational ideology.
To achieve this, I have recruited a sample of around 200 people on Prolific and asked them about 20 vocational interests. For each of the vocational interests, I have taken those who score high and low on the scale, and invited 3 high scorers and 3 low scorers to describe their opinion on the field, using a question like the following:
Opinions on carpentry*
What are your opinions about the role of carpentry? This could be things such as:
* How important/helpful/harmful is carpentry to society?
* What is the future of carpentry?
* Does society have too much or too little respect for carpenters?
* What is the character/virtues/vices of carpenters?
* Do you have any personal experiences or relationships which deeply affect how you view carpentry, and if so, which?
You don't have to address these specific questions; you can also give you own opinions on carpentry, separate from these ones.
(Minimum 300 characters)
I am getting around 100 responses to different jobs, and based on those responses, I identify statements that might be ideologically relevant, which I intend to submit to factor analysis.
Market
I grabbed a random measure of IT interests that I saw while scrolling through twitter one time:
Create a new computer database
Monitor the daily performance of computer systems
Diagnose and resolve computer hardware or software problems
(This had a Cronbach alpha of 0.81 in my data, but that might not matter because if it seems justified I will adjust for attenuation.)
Based on people's responses, I have the following items assessing IT ideology:
People who work in tech have poor social skills.
We need to regulate technology because too much is changing too fast.
IT people get a lot of respect and money.
IT people tend to be arrogant, rude and dismissive.
Tech companies spy on people in terrible ways.
High-end tech roles get respect and money, while basic IT jobs are often overlooked.
To become successful in IT, one has to be interested in learning coding skills.
It is hard to find good IT teachers, because they can earn more money working for tech companies.
People are getting overly reliant on having computers thinking for them, rather than thinking for themselves.
AI will likely cause many people to become unemployed.
IT/tech discriminates against women, giving them lower pay and lower rank.
I might adjust the items, e.g. adding more items as I get more responses to the survey, but you can think of these as indicative of what I mean by asking people about IT ideology. "Ideology" is meant to cover abstract value-laden questions about bigger societal relations, as well as views about the nature and virtues and vices of things.
The simplest way to score them might be to create a sum score of positive vs negative opinions, but I might do something more elaborate, e.g. factor-analysing or adjusting for attenuation, if it seems appropriate. If the IT factor seems part of some other more general factor that includes opinions about other jobs than IT too, then I might also include items from those other jobs. For instance, here's some items I might also include:
In the future, carpentry might be replaced by AI or 3D printing.
Engineers often just adapt old products instead of creating new, proper solutions.
The simple things in life are overlooked and displaced by new technology.
The logical "engineer" style of thinking is in tension with artistic creativity.
Engineers develop systems which make life simpler.
AI and robots might handle a lot of mechanics jobs in the future.
Self-driving vehicles will make drivers obsolete.
It will take a long time before self-driving cars are generally feasible.
Math is critically important for our high-tech society.
AI will soon contribute a lot to medical research.
AI and big data will be useful for better making scientific sense of society.
It is depressing if AI can make as engaging writing as humans can.
It is foolish to try to replace customer service with bots.
Teaching will need to start incorporating AI technology.
Some online advertising is a harmless way to fund free access to websites.
Accountants are getting outdated as it can be handled by computers.
AI is going to make office work much more efficient in the future.
It also doesn't have to be narrowly about IT since the sex difference in vocational interests isn't localized to IT but also appears to cover other technical and physical subjects, so I might also include items such as "A lot of drivers are reckless." if the factor analysis justifies it.
Resolution criteria
This market resolves to YES if I get r > 0.4 (or R>0.4) with an IMO appropriately adjusted measure of IT ideology (or other ideology).
This market resolves to NO if I get r < 0.4.
If there is no meaningful ideological variation in these questions, then the market still resolves to NO unless I somehow get meaningless ideological variation to go r > 0.4.
If something stupid happens along the lines of my measure being too biased around progressive ideology rather than vocational ideology to capture a proper r > 0.4, then I guess the question resolves NO, rather than me doing some convoluted followup thing.
If I can't decide what types of statistics I feel are best for the analysis, and this leave the answer ambiguous, I'll probably resolve PROB 50% (or maybe some skewed thing, e.g. if 3 out of 4 methods lead to r > 0.4, then I will may resolve PROB 75%, but it depends on whether the 3 methods are "too similar" to each other).
TO EMPHASIZE: A YES RESOLUTION TO THIS MARKET IS NOT STRONG EVIDENCE THAT INTERESTS ARE UPSTREAM OF IDEOLOGY. Anyone saying so is probably lying or bad at inference. Rather, a NO resolution is IMO strong evidence against interests being upstream of ideology.