Submitted by chrisbokiul t3_z4dli0 in television
Raffy87 t1_ixque4l wrote
Reply to comment by JohnTDouche in 'The Crown' Star, Emma Corrin, Calls for Gender-Neutral Acting Awards by chrisbokiul
just because the result isn't 50/50 doesn't mean it is because of bias
JohnTDouche t1_ixqvjjl wrote
I mean there's always going to be bias unfortunately but over time(this being the important term here) it should balance out to roughly 50/50. Provided the number of roles over time is also roughly 50/50. I couldn't say how much time you'd need for an assessment. You'd have to ask a stats guy.
Raffy87 t1_ixqw3fo wrote
You can't even make that assumption as you're talking about people's opinions not random outcomes, its entirely possible one side would get more votes on a consistent basis. If anything the main 'bias' at play would be from the previous results, as if one side was seeming to dominate there would be an incentive to vote for the other just to even things out.
Anatar19 t1_ixr1qds wrote
The first post just said bias. Nothing more.Of course we'd have to figure out what the bias actually meant. The amount of people jumping in to insert their own specific assumed circumstances and apply them as a straw man honestly says a lot about the biases in this thread.
JohnTDouche t1_ixqwwit wrote
I mean the objective is to try and reduce bias right? I know you can't be purely objective about this but the point of these awards is to single out the "best" performance. Not favorite actor or not favorite movie or other biases political or otherwise that not related to the performance.
Anatar19 t1_ixqwycm wrote
What do you think these awards are if not an indicator of bias? It's certain people voting saying "I liked this better." There's no specific measuring qualifiers. The only issue is that there are many different biases at play which is where increasing the sample size over time helps to clear things up a bit.
Raffy87 t1_ixqy4xz wrote
I was referring specifically to gender bias
JohnTDouche t1_ixqzkr5 wrote
If there is no gender bias in the system it should settle at about 50/50 though.
If somehow all gender bias was eliminated from the nominee selection process and say 80% of them over 50 years were men. That would still indicate there being a gender bias. Just not one in the nominee selection. It would mean you have gender bias in casting, in writing etc. You can't take this one final little piece out of a system and examine it out of context of the rest of the system.
Raffy87 t1_ixr0a43 wrote
If 80% of the winners were female, is it not possible that they they gave a better performance compared to the men they were pitted against in those years?
Anatar19 t1_ixr1gzl wrote
That year? Sure. Why are you choosing to continually miss the part about "over time" which was right there in the first comment? Is it possible that women gave better performances than men 80% of the time for 100 years in a row? At that point it would be pretty clear that the highly subjective word "better" included a significant bias towards women over men.
Raffy87 t1_ixr1l6o wrote
edited it so you may understand better
Anatar19 t1_ixr1uqq wrote
Great, so now define "better" in a way that doesn't have bias.
Raffy87 t1_ixr251h wrote
better as in gets the most votes, if this were to happen it would essentially be pitting the best actor against the best actress, if more people prefer the performance of someone that doesn't mean they're bias against the other because of their gender
Anatar19 t1_ixr2e1u wrote
At this point I don't even think you know what bias means.
Raffy87 t1_ixr2mpr wrote
If I vote for a woman does that mean I'm bias against men? because that's what you're implying
Anatar19 t1_ixr32me wrote
No it isn't. It means you were biased towards that woman that one specific time. It could be for any number or reasons one of which is the fact that she's a woman. You are still biased (everyone is) but figuring out the nature of the bias is way harder with a small sample size.
If you vote for a woman 8000 times out of 10000 you're far more likely to prefer voting for women than men even if there are onviously other factors involved.
Raffy87 t1_ixr3vrg wrote
For bias you have to be 'unfairly prejudiced' for or against someone or something, simply preferring the performance of one person over another does not constitute bias.
Anatar19 t1_ixr4c8c wrote
No you don't need to be unfairly prejudiced. But even with that in mind as a common use of the word, define "unfair" in a way that doesn't include bias. The example you gave before about "best" somehow implied that "popular vote = best" and if that's what you're going with, I don't know what to tell you. It used to be popular to believe some people were witches and that they need to be burned at the stake. Does that make it thr best? Fair?
Raffy87 t1_ixr4usj wrote
>you don't need to be unfairly prejudiced
that is the definition of bias.
We are talking about awards achieved through votes, so yes, most popular wins. No it's not fair, if it was everyone would get an award but then what's the point?
Anatar19 t1_ixr5mom wrote
You've made up your own definition of bias then. Every dictionary I can find talks about personal judgment, sometimes unfair/unreasoned but not always.
As for your definition, then maybe we should stop calling awards "best performance" and relabel it "most popular performance." While there will always be elements of bias there it doesn't mean they can't be identified and we can't strive to put some of them aside. Otherwise we might as well just have the people's choice awards and be done with it.
Raffy87 t1_ixr6fgp wrote
Well it's art, it can never be judged objectively and to call people's preferences bias is wrong, without preferences they wouldn't be able to choose between two performances. I agree the award is really most popular performance but I think most people know this so the name doesn't need changing.
Anatar19 t1_ixr7fmd wrote
Interesting, you picked the word biased as an adjective similar but if I drop it down for "bias" I get"
"cause to feel or show inclination or prejudice for or against someone or something"
as the first definition
Your source, not mine.
But lets add some others for fun.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bias
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bias
Turns out bias actually does mean that.
And yes, it's the arts. They can't be judged fairly. That was exactly the point in my very first post if you scroll up. These awards are basically nothing but bias in and of themselves. That doesn't make them bad or anything, just biased. And given enough information we can figure stuff out about what kinds of biases are there, of which women and men is a rather obvious one but there are also many others.
Anatar19 t1_ixr4z9x wrote
And just as an added point, explain how personal preference as a judgment of someone else is fair in any way? That's entirely arbitrary and up to an "other." These awards aren't designed to be fair from the outset for a whole number of reasons. I don't see why you have such an issue with the idea of looking into the potential for one specific bias along with many others.
Raffy87 t1_ixr5nua wrote
I was merely pointing out that just because a population (the voters) don't come to a 50/50 result on something as subjective as other's acting performances doesn't mean there is an inherent bias.
Anatar19 t1_ixr69yx wrote
And I was pointing out that you were dropping the "over time" part of the equation and skirting the definition of bias. Yes, if over a large enough sample size over time things don't break down 50/50 (or 52/48 or whatever) it DOES mean there is a bias there. Then we have to explain that bias. Is it because directors are centering roles around one gender more than another? Are writers writing more characters over another? Are voters skewed one direction in ant number of ways for any number of reasons? That bias might be coming from places we don't expect but just because we don't know all that stuff yet doesn't mean we should deny it exists and avoid looking into the potential causes entirely.
Raffy87 t1_ixr6ocw wrote
We will have to agree to disagree, have a good night
JohnTDouche t1_ixr4ohj wrote
Okay lets put it this way. Say you have a society that claims to be meritocratic where it's made of 50% ethnic group A and 50% ethnic group B. Yet 90% of the people below the poverty line are from group A. Then you have serious problems in that system. You have biases compounding over time to produce this unequal result. This stuff doesn't happen by coincidence. Coincidences don't add up to significant statistical differences.
Raffy87 t1_ixr528b wrote
We are discussing people voting on their preference of art
JohnTDouche t1_ixr7x3k wrote
It's the same issue. Preference on art are rife with biases. If someone just doesn't like female lead characters in films, that's a "preference of art" but also a bias. If we assume that acting is something that men and women can be equally good at. Then if that's a common preference, it's a significant statistical bias leading skewed results. It would mean that negative biases against women are leading to fewer acting awards for them.
Raffy87 t1_ixr8nhr wrote
>If we assume that acting is something that men and women can be equally good at
Why would you make that assumption? Unfortunately how 'good' they are at acting is entirely dependant on how they are judged, the two are linked. So if one group is judged to be better than the other, that's the reality of the situation, as unfair as you may deem it.
JohnTDouche t1_iy2xb6a wrote
We must assume that because the entire argument hinges on it. If you think men are just naturally better performers when it comes to acting then that is an entirely different issue altogether. That' belief would make this discussion completely pointless.
Raffy87 t1_iy2xj5f wrote
the only metric of their performance is the votes they receive, so if they get more votes they are better, that's the system
JohnTDouche t1_iy2yw6x wrote
Votes reflect the biases of the voters, they're not the measurement of objective reality. I'm trying to present a statistical argument here, a very basic one. Statistics covering large numbers of people is used to flatten out our biases in the attempt to present a more objective view of reality and lay bare the biases of these large numbers of people. If you can't agree to that then this has is utterly pointless. You still seem to think this is about individuals judging performance.
Raffy87 t1_iy2yzf8 wrote
because it is
JohnTDouche t1_iy30cpc wrote
So statistics aren't real. This is supremely silly.
Raffy87 t1_iy30pfo wrote
statistics are real, but you can't conclude gender bias from voting results with no objective measures. If there were objective measures and the votes went against this then you would have a point, but there isn't.
JohnTDouche t1_iy30ydf wrote
I don't want to start repeating myself. I and that other fella explained all this to you already. You're just not understanding.
Raffy87 t1_iy31s71 wrote
I understand your point, I just don't agree with it.
JohnTDouche t1_ixqxflx wrote
Exactly. All biases other than "which performance did you think was best" should be attempted to be eliminated if you are looking to give a "Best Performance" award.
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