Why does WB.SE treat social sciences as non-existent?

Question

I do not know how to talk about it politely, please excuse my bluntness.

This question (Can gender identity exist in a world without gender roles?) is the perfect example that the WB.SE community ignores social sciences. Every single VTC'er who commented shows little to no familiarity with gender theory and academic research in the corresponding field. Every attempted answer uses notions of gender inconsistent with existing scientific terminology and methodology.

As the OP correctly pointed out in the comments this is a yes/no question that should be answered based on existing psychological and sociological theories of gender. Please note that the OP does not ask whether the world without gender roles is possible or how to engineer such a world. The OP states that in their world gender roles do not exist. And then asks whether gender identities can exist in such a world.

This question has one and only one correct answer that will be true regardless of the characters and their actions: Gender identities cannot exist in a world without gender roles (this is derived from the very definitions of gender, gender identity, and gender role). This answer also holds true for any setting and any species that have intelligence comparable to humans and social structures that enable the existence of social phenomena such as social roles and identities.

The concept of gender is non-intuitive and confusing, especially if one has no formal training in gender studies and/or related fields or has no personal experience with non-cisgender people. Moreover, the results of scientific research contradict common sense (because common sense is based on dominating cultural norms and stereotypes). One must adhere to science when evaluating questions related to gender and when answering those questions if they strive for high quality and objectivity of decisions and answers.

The question mentioned above is one of the most blatant examples of disregard for social sciences on this stack. But there are other questions that are treated in a similar way: The VTC'ers do not understand the theories behind the question (or applicable theories and frameworks), do not care about those theories, and often refuse to accept their existence if confronted. The questions are often labelled as opinion-based (aka not answerable with facts and citations) despite a huge number of academic papers that could've been used to substantiate an answer or 'Too Story Based' despite questions being theoretical in nature.

In my opinion, the current attitude toward social sciences in this community has a number of negative effects:

• fewer questions about culture and society (WB.SE almost can be renamed into 'Fictional physics and technology');
• creates a situation where those who understand social sciences have little interest in asking questions (because of low probability of getting satisfactory answers) and those who are not versed in social sciences cannot ask questions because they cannot write lengthy theoretical explanations that could help to avoid closure;
• the potentially lower quality of fictional worlds created by the members of this community;
• fewer specialists in social sciences who frequent the stack (which leads to low-quality questions and answers in the fields of humanities);
• dissemination of falsehoods and stereotypes (a lot of answers to questions that involve humans and societies are answered based on personal opinions [speculations], common sense, stereotypes, and false assumptions instead of science and contain a lot of factual mistakes).

I believe that just the latter warrants the change of attitude toward social sciences. It is perfectly fine if the community does not want to deal with 'soft' sciences, but it is not fine to spread falsehoods. It is better to exclude all questions that are not related to technology and natural sciences than to continue as it is now.

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Notes:

1. This post is not an attempt to reopen the gender identity question. Please, do not explain why you think it should stay closed.
2. I am not linking other questions because I do not want this discussion to devolve into a discussion of reasons for the closure of any specific question.
3. In order to keep this post relatively short I had to omit a lot. Please, ask questions in the comments if you want me to elaborate on something in more detail.
4. If you want a detailed explanation for the answer to the gender identity question, please, invite me to chat and I will do my best to provide it.
5. I do not have access to statistics and I do not have time to go through all questions by hand, but it seems to me that 4-5 years ago when I just started using WB.SE there were more questions related to humanities than what we have now. This is my impression and it may be wrong. If someone has these data I would appreciate it if they could share them.

Answer 1

Stripping away the red herring of "gender" as it is currently used in American culture (in particular), there are simply two issues at play here in this forum: "Story based" and "opinion based". I read through the comments to the original query and discovered that, unsurprisingly, these were at the heart of the VTC.

There is a bias in WB.SE, and that bias tends to favour queries that align more with hard SciFi. The basic assumption seems to be that a fictional world ought to work just like Earth, and that every question ought to be simply addressable by known science. This bias is not specifically against social sciences: there exist the same biases against magic, fantastic beasts, fantastic peoples, alternate & orthogonal sciences, supernatural realia, etc. Such questions are often met with outright hostility, as we could see in the cited example (being shut down for a spurious reason); but usually they're just met with dramatic skepticism of the "how will your dragon deal with gravity" sort.

The problem of bias here is twofold. One is that bias is brought in by the individual. Wherever there is a community of individuals come together for a purpose like ours (to help other people understand their fictional worlds!) these biases can not be avoided. The other kind of bias is that of the platform itself: SE makes certain assumptions about itself and writes into its constitution certain norms & certain protocols that simply don't work well with the fictional. This can not be avoided either: it simply falls to the community to continually renew awareness that this institutional bias exists and that we as members can't fall for it.

The best we can do, or the best I can do, is to review the underlying issues as matters of Stack Exchange protocol and realign them to fit the nature of the forum community they must be applied to. In so doing, perhaps those individuals who have such biases against social science or the fantastic will be persuaded not so much to jump on the bandwaggon, but to at least refrain from accosting those who would march in the parade!

Story Based. To review, there are (give or take) five elements to narrative: setting, theme, character, conflict, plot. The only part of that we deal with here in this forum is the nature of the setting --- the fictional world. The original query in question is not about a narrative. While it could be cleaned up, the question is clearly one of world and not narrative per se.

A lot of so-called "fuzzy" questions of behaviour, of psychology, of soft-science get closed for this reason. For clarity, unless the query specifically addresses theme, character, conflict or plot, it is not a question about a story. Leave it open or find a better reason to close.

Opinion based. I've been railing against this closure rationale ever since I started here a few years ago. To review, Stack Exchange the broad community is designed to be a place where a querent can ask a specific, focused question and get a coherent & fact based answer. This works great in Chemistry and Literature and English Usage and Physics.

Almost no question ever asked in WB.SE is actually fact based or even has one correct answer. Almost every question ever asked here is, actually, opinion based. It is the nature of fictional worlds and all things in them to be somewhat fluid, polyoptional and open to multiple interpretations. And it is the purpose of WB.SE to address the irrealia of the fictional, the fantastic, the mythic and the unlikely.

Summation. For our purposes, social sciences are no different than orbital mechanics or chemistry or geology. We need, I think, as a community, to learn to read a little deeper into a question. To find the question behind the question. We need to embrace these kinds of difficult questions; we need to engage our creativity and our imagination more than we need to exercise our VTC buttons.

When a question is clearly asking about character development or plot choices, when a question is clearly asking for a simple opinion from among several equal choices: please vote to close those!

When a question is clearly asking about the nature of the world itself or the nature of the people that inhabit it: leave the question open!

Answer 2

The answer is actually very simple.

WB.SE treats some social sciences, mostly new and unsettled, as non-existent because they don't exist. Or, better said, they don't exist yet.

Other social sciences, such as economics and, in part, sociology, which have produced widely read and respected books, can point to solid observations, can actually measure the phenomena which they study, are not at all ignored on this site.

A significant part of what is called social sciences consists of various culture-specific bodies of undeclared fiction; more in the nature of the lore associated with various fictional universes. What a specific culture considers to be "gender theory and academic research" is by and large unknown in other cultures. In particular, there is chasm between what those words mean in northern North America and what they mean elsewhere. (And another chasm between what they mean in Eastern Europe and what they mean elsewhere, and presumably another between what they mean in China they mean elsewhere and so on.)

The user base of this site is cosmopolitan. We come from all over the world. And we do not have a common body of knowledge of "gender theory".

Yes, there are dedicated people who are at work investigating those fields of inquiry. No, they haven't yet reached a point where a common body of knowledge has diffused throughout the world. This should not be seen as disparaging in any way; those fields are young, they are in process of accumulating foundational data; but they are important, and in the fullness of time they will become sciences.

Not to mention that the entire field of "gender theory" is exceedingly new. Unlike physics, or mathematics, or history, or chemistry, or economy, or even sociology etc., where one can profit from going to Archive.org, or Gutenberg.org and reading books written a hundred years ago, in "gender theory" one has to keep abreast of an ever changing, ever mutating, geographically diverse permanent revolution.

^{Google Books Ngram viewer for "gender theory". As we can see, the phrase was basically not used before the late 1970s, and it only became mainstream in the 1990s.}

The entire field of inquiry is less than half a century years old. How many truths could the researchers have established in such a short time? Are the truths they established in the 1980s still true in the 2020s? Will they be still true in the 2050s?

Answer 3

In general

There are many problems regarding social sciences (or sometimes people say "soft sciences") that we, people on WB:SE are facing :

First and foremost, they are often related to individuals, and as such tend to be quickly classified as "It's story based!". Thing is, social studies are about groups of people, not individuals. More on that further down in the example.

Then, they are often considered as "fuzzy", which lead to either "opinion-based", "need to be focused" or plain "off-topic" issues. That is, until you get statistics because there are recomforting digits there. Yep, it's more comfortable to evaluate if you have evident formulas and values to reliably relate to, unlike some weird words which are seemingly apparent to feelings. However, concrete data, accurate word usage, formula and experiment protocols exist in social sciences, but it's just not as evident or famous as the physics or maths you learn at school.

Finally and most importantly, because it's often talking about our daily lives, we like to see ourselves as the role of the "expert", which is a dangerous stance we all took once in our life.** It's not because you are doing something routinely that you know how all people do, and especially why anyone actually do that. Without having thoroughly studied a topic, you can only reasonably say you don't know, or give a self-related counter-example as to why something "can" be wrong. I stress that I don't mean "is wrong", but "can" be wrong. This point leads to many misunderstandings, in both the asker and the answerers as on how to present and tackle the problem.

Taking the related question as example

The question, while written out of good intentions, didn't manage to explain clearly the different elements consisting the issues they had. But it's totally normal, people who are facing gender dysphoria¹ who are the most apt at seeing the difference, are often times unable to describe it. When talking about this topic, I often advise to clearly state every time what meaning to "gender" they refer to. So will I try to do here :

• Assigned-at-birth gender : The easiest definition : what sex you were officially born with. It's whether you have XX or XY DNA, or most of the time which apparatus you had as a baby (not all cases of people having XY are assigned male at birth!).
• Gender role : In and among the society, which main genders are there. While I cannot ascertain with 100% certainty, the gender role could be defined by a combination of physical traits (clothes, makeup...) and social norms, habits (how you interact with others) which help in defining one or the other gender. For transgender people, it's often what visible gender you "present as" to others, or (I dislike this term but it is often used) what you "pass as".
• Gender identity : What you think you are. Do you think you are a female, do you think you are a male? Another gender or a blend of the two? It is a personal feeling, which is invisible for most people, but can be revealed by taking public actions which are not common for your gender (and not as a joke, too }i{). For instance, if you feel shame or lots of incomfort at the idea of wearing a dress all day at work in occident cultures, then your gender identity is a lil' more likely to be a man (It is not a certainty! It's a complex topic :) ).

As I reread the original question, there was a lack of prior-definition like above to help people understand what elements exactly makes the issue the asker was facing. In fact, the critical word gender was used as a shorthand for many definitions. That's why I asked in the bound discussion to detail what they meant, which they did to the best of their extent. This consequently led us to the 2nd issue and which A Rogue Ant sums up quite clearly :) :

Your edit seems to touch on fashion, more than anything which can be answered with an objective eye, can you clarify what it is you need to know?

Remember the "social sciences seem fuzzy" and "self-expertise" part? Well, We have fallen in these cases. We, as individuals, think that wearing a certain type of clothing is a subjective thing -with good sense-, and paradoxally, we know in most countries today, most men -the gender role- wear pants while women are more likely to wear skirts or dresses. Where lies exactly the subjective part? Not when looking at groups of people in the culture, it seems.

And that's the trap which is also my first point : You actually have the individual scale, and the society's one. The first one is subjective, the latter is objective. Even though people will do their own thing of their own free will, as a group their actions will move in average towards the same direction.

And it's something, we -the answerers- need to be careful of : Where lies the line between pure subjectivity (off-topic, opinion-based...) and objectivity? Are we talking about a whole society which moves in the same direction? If yes, then I'm more likely to declare it as on-topic. If it's only about one person, obviously no. A few peeps? You're right in the fog, so you should flip your tongue 7 times in front of your horse before pronouncing your sentence. Here, it becomes important to check if it's just a way to say things by giving an attracting personality to an otherwise random person in a group. Or... To check if it is so tightly tied to a series of events it cannot be considered as taking out a random group of people from the whole society.

Talking only about the on/off-topic problem, the question is on-topic to me since it talks about the whole society and is beneficial in improving one's world. It's a case where groups can be defined without the need to tell any story event, or in other words : what happened or will happen is not important there : It's about what people are.

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¹ Gender dysphoria : A discrepancy between what you feel as, and what the environment tells you you are, including your own body. It's often what transgender people feel or have felt.

Answer 4

@Elemtilas is absolutely right: this site is so hard-wired to the idea of in-real-life hard science that it eventually provoked my own complaint on meta (Real Life cannot be an overriding limitation on any question unless specifically requested). It's become so bad that perhaps we should re-open the discussion about the suitability of real-world questions on this Stack. I was a strong supporter back when the decision was made, but now that a few years have gone by, I can't but admit that in permitting them (ostensibly by requiring a worldbuilding context), we've encouraged the hard science bias that exists on this stack.

I'm going to offer some opinions about what I believe are the two predominant biases affecting questions about the social sciences and why they exist. These are my opinions. If you want to jump to my recommendations for how we can better support social-science-based questions, scroll down to the TL;DR: So, what can we do? section.

Hard Science Bias

If you'll forgive me, let me use one of your paragraphs to illuminate the nature of this bias.

The concept of gender is non-intuitive and confusing, especially if one has no formal training in gender studies and/or related fields or has no personal experience with non-cisgender people. Moreover, the results of scientific research contradict common sense (because common sense is based on dominating cultural norms and stereotypes). One must adhere to science when evaluating questions related to gender and when answering those questions if they strive for high quality and objectivity of decisions and answers. [Emphasis mine.]

Problem #1 is that gender is perceived as entirely intuitive and not at all confusing to most individuals. Attempting to convince someone that what they perceive to be so simple and obvious ("I'm a man... why aren't you?") is almost always perceived as patronizing. It's an emotional response that no amount of logic will easily dent. Add to this...

Problem #2: There is no scientific test (one that meets the fundamental requirements of the Scientific Method) that definitively identifies gender identity or preference. And yet people who are free to openly participate with any question are being asked to adhere to "science." This is the paradox that, in my opinion, most underscores the bias on this Stack in relation to questions about social sciences — or, more specifically, behavior.

I believe too many people, notably people who have not completed a college education in some scientific field, fail to realize that there are, for lack of a better way of saying it, multiple kinds of "science." There's mathematics, which people seem to believe is "as close as we can come to the handwriting of God," and chemistry or any similar science that can use the Scientific Method to follow the "if I can measure it, it's real" flow of reasoning are absolute. This, despite obvious weaknesses (like the necessity that mathematical simulation is only as good as the empirical measurements it's based on and chemistry only reflecting the materials we actually know about), these two "sciences" tend to be reasonably solid such that the average person feels comfortable trusting them even if they know nothing at all about them.

Then there's "scientific reasoning," meaning that testing is difficult because there isn't always (if ever) a causal effect that can be measured, which is the fundamental problem with associating the word "science" with "behavior."

Please don't get me wrong. I believe the dedicated study of human behavior is valuable and a science of its own — but I don't believe astrophysics understands everything about our own solar system, so when someone asks me to believe the science supporting behavior, I'm a born skeptic.⁰ And without that demonstrable, repeatable, "scientific" test that can definitively prove gender identify or preference, the "science" can have nothing to base itself on but behavior and people's opinions.

And the average person unpracticed in the art subconsciously knows that. The fields of the social sciences simply haven't been around long enough nor have a well enough established track record to convincingly educate enough people to raise them to the level of the so-called "hard sciences."

Hard science and soft science are colloquial terms used to compare scientific fields on the basis of perceived methodological rigor, exactitude, and objectivity.Roughly speaking, the natural sciences are considered "hard", whereas the social sciences are usually described as "soft". (Listen to the entire audio, intended for the blind, here)

Political Bias

But I believe there is another bias at work here. Call it a "political" bias. This stack tends to have a United States-centric culture. That's certainly inconvenient, but not surprising for a service designed and based in the U.S., which hosts the world's largest body of English-speaking people. As you consider that list I just linked, please note that the top five populations of English-speaking people are:

1. The United States
2. India
3. Nigeria
4. The Philippines
5. The United Kingdom

I might be completely wrong, but I believe I can argue that the top four positions are held by some of the least social-sciences-tolerant English-speaking people on Earth. My point?

Expecting the average user of this Stack to accept the social sciences as a definitive authority concerning human behavior is asking a lot.

Do I wish it were otherwise? I do. But how to do it? Obviously, restricting user participation based on whether or not they are personally qualified and accredited to answer is quite literally antithetical to the design of Stack Exchange.

But it's also why down voting exists. To remind people that they didn't have the expertise to participate concerning a particular question. I can't speak for others — but I've had a few answers that I thought contained clever insight only to be down voted and proven in comments that neither the answer nor I were anything of the sort. As Winston Churchill is purported to have said, "Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried."¹

Every user brings the entirety of their behavior with them to this Stack. That includes their loves and hates, their political/religious/philosophical biases, their educational focus (and sometimes the lack thereof). And this, alone, underscores the difficulty of convincing the Stack to better accept the social sciences as authoritative.

TL;DR: So, what could we do?

Knowing perfectly well that the average user has spent little to no time actually reading the Help Center pages or any of the tag wikis... (And I wouldn't be surprised if 99% of the difficulties on this Stack boil down to that one weakness).

1. I think a concerted effort to review our tag wiki names and pages concerning the social sciences is in order. It's likely that there are some tags that bridge between the soft and hard sciences. If so, those (hopefully few) tags should be redesigned to reflect hard- and soft-science personas. Those tags that are far too generic (I'm looking at you behaviour) should be seriously considered for burning and replaced with a (hopefully very small) set of more useful tags. Those tags that would be appropriate for questions concerning behavioral or social world building should have their wikis evaluated to be as precise and concise as possible with appropriate examples to help users who are not practiced in the art to better identify the expected direction for respondents.

2. Knowing from experience how hard this next one would be: I believe it would be appropriate for someone like Otkin (someone "practiced in the art") to formulate a Meta chain that ends in a single post (like the "perfect question" chain did) that could become the authoritative reference for what our community believes "social world building" means... then have the Mods include "Society and Behavior" on the list of "Sample topics" found on the "What topics can I ask about here?" Help Center page.² If someone is willing to take this particular project on (and if they do, they should hear from the Mods about their willingness to update the Help Center pages first), I would ask them to remember that their audience is NOT made up of people who understand the subject like they do and that the goal of this effort is NOT to bring anyone up to that level. Remember SE's "book rule."

3. Finally, most stacks have "events" that promote some aspect concerning the use of their stack. We've had bounty challenges where we encouraged users to find questions to bounty to entice younger members to greater participation and we've also had the old fortnightly topic challenges. I believe AFTER the previous two steps have been taken that it would make sense to resurrect and/or create such events and use them to encourage users to focus on asking and answering social-science-based questions. During these events, mods and senior users would/should make a concerted effort to use the resources developed and improved in #1 and #2 to address the concerns of down voters and close voters and to help the community at large to better understand what makes a good social-science-based question and why they're valuable here.³

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_{⁰ I was once asked by a homosexual why I felt it was unreasonable to take his word for his sexual-preference? My response: If his word could be trusted to so great a degree, then there should be no need for adjudication in any case wherein he could testify as to the facts of the case. Was there no such need? The conversation ended very quickly. This is the basic difficulty of the so-called "soft" sciences: they're based on the observation of human actions, which can be motivated consciously and unconsciously by the subject. No matter how well set up the test and how well vetted the results, there's always a larger room for interpretive error than is found in the so-called "hard" sciences.}

_{¹ What he actually said was, "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…" (Source) My point with the statement is that SE is far too democratic for scientific consensus to be considered universally trustworthy, even on a Stack with the hard science bias this Stack has.}

_{² Fair warning to whomever might take a shot at that... You need to develop a final text that is utterly and completely devoid of any effort to change the minds and hearts of the reader. Otherwise there's a proverbial 99% chance that the effort will entirely fail as emotions take precedence over intellect. The result must make an honest effort to educate, not convert. The ideal solution would be one that someone who lividly hates homosexuality (for example) could read and come away not only understanding how to ask their question, but willing to participate on the Stack without a bias carried from the page itself. I believe it can be done — but I'd be foolish not to wish any effort to do so the best of luck.}

_{³ Please, please, PLEASE do NOT jump straight to this recommendation! We need to make a serious effort to address issues #1 and #2 first so that we have an improved foundation to work with when we start moving forward with this.}

Answer 5

WB.SE is a multi-disciplinary stack, but not evenly so

I just addressed a very similar issue here: https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8316/57832

The short answer is that WB.SE is a multi-disciplinary stack; so, what some people see as fact, others see as opinion. This is a problem regardless of what your background is, but I agree that we tend to have far more members who lack a background in social sciences than other areas which leads to more bad CtVs.

This does not necessarily make those CtVers in any way bigoted, it just reveals that they do not know enough about the topic to know when facts and research may exist.

The real issue with opinion-based close votes are that they are not a measure of how many people know the right answer to a question, instead they are a measure of how many people believe there is not an acceptable answer to the question; so, in many cases such as this, your CtVs are really just a tally of how many people don't know anything about the topic.

Since you don't know what you don't know, the only real solution here is to encourage people not to use "Opinion Based" close votes until AFTER several answers have already been given. In general, the only way to know if a question is actually opinion based is to let people answer it and see if any actual facts and research get brought up.

Answer 6

In my opinion, Worldbuilding SE suffers a little from the opinions of those who are not experts in any number of fields in which questions require an expert opinion, who do not recognise their lack of expertise. This problem is not limited to the social sciences.

Anyone can vote on any question or answer, or vote to close, regardless of their understanding of the question. It is all too easy for someone without expert knowledge of the subject of a question to feel that a question is poorly asked or incapable of a definitive answer, because to them, it is so... even if to an expert, their judgement is incorrect.

As an expert in certain fields, I have personally seen excellent questions being downvoted and voted to close simply because those so voting don't seem able to understand that to someone with my expertise, they are eminently answerable and specific.

This is a fundamental flaw in the SE Q&A format, and particularly prevalent in WB SE, where the range of subjects and areas of expertise is very broad. The only solution to this problem is for genuine experts to comment, saying why a question being downvoted and/or VTCed should not be closed, or to flag closed good questions to the moderators to be reopened, with an explanation of why the community may have got it wrong. That's why the moderators are here, as much as to clean up the messes that public sites inevitably collect.

Answer 7

What kind of remedy do you propose? That WB require members to ask questions about topics that are important to you? Will there be quotas?

Members ask about the topics they want to ask about.

I'm personally frustrated by how much of modern science fiction simply transplants contemporary geopolitical facts and lifeways into some cosmetically futuristic setting, but I can't force authors to spend the time and energy necessary to develop a vision of society that is thoroughly, coherently altered by speculative technology.

I'm also frustrated by how many questions seem to be transparently derivative of modern vampire rape-fantasy trash, but there's nothing I can do about that, either.

People ask about what they choose to ask about. And answers will get downvoted that fail to engage with the meat of the question as asked.

I studied feminist film theory in college. I'm not an expert, but if someone were to ask a question that implicates the male gaze or gay labor, and if I see that question, and if I'm intrigued by the specifics, I'm happy to rattle off the things I know, hunt for relevant references online, etc. But I can't make them do that.

I'd love to see someone take a run at Asimov's Foundation. I'd love to see someone poking around topics like weaponized sociology. But I can't make them do it.

Frame challenge

Maybe the reason people don't ask the questions you want as often as you see fit is that, despite the ascension of vicious Libertarian anti-education dogma, people still get exposed to this a lot in their lives and education: from thoughtful (overworked, underpaid) teachers; from broad-minded parents who believe (rightly, I say) that their children are more likely to thrive if they can grow even moar broad-minded; from their friends; from the many eloquent social progressives in the arts and social media; from stand-up comics who, per Minsky, collect and catalog markers along the boundary between reason and unreason.

Maybe it's so ubiquitous in their lives that they don't think it's problematic or even interesting.

Let's lay the groundwork

I don't think this will have any impact, but if there's anything trusted SE community can do easily, it's to prepare the way by creating appropriate tags (with quality descriptions) for:

• each of the social sciences;
• the key theories, tensions, and problems each science is concerned with;
• perhaps (if appropriate), landmark findings or experiments (e.g. Milgram)

I dunno. Go wild.

But the bottom line is that posters have free will, and evidently they aren't brought here by the topics you think they should be.

Answer 8

Because for all intents and purposes on this site, they are.

For better or for worse, most wannabe sci-fi or fantasy authors (i.e. the kind of people we generally see here) assume that the next blockbuster they (imagine they) are going to write has to have something unique and special about the sci-fi or fantasy in their world, in order to be a blockbuster. And while it's true that a unique attribute is a good hook due to the novelty factor, it's also true that novelty is fleeting and as such, a poor substitute for a well-thought-out and compelling world.

Unfortunately, most people never get past that first self-imposed hurdle, so they never get to the point where they need to seriously think about how beings in their world interact. And if they do get to that point, most are still too preoccupied with their Unique Selling Point, or too inflexible in their thinking, to do anything more than replicate the current societal norms they're most comfortable with into their story. So they're never going to post questions about society-building here.

But let's say you do have such an author, who's thought long and hard about how to create a society that's relatable, yet sufficiently different to provoke readers to reflect. Such a person is almost certainly going to do their own research on how to create this societal difference, in the course of which they're almost certainly going to come across the sex vs gender conundrum... and the minefield of, let's just say, sensibilities around it.

Given that minefield, I personally would be very hesitant to post anything about that topic. Why should we assume that our hypothetical author would be any different, i.e. why would they ever post a question here?

In short, if you do ever get far enough along in building your world to the point where you're ready to ask such a question, you already know enough to know that asking such a question is likely to be A Bad Idea. Thus, such questions are self-selecting to never be asked, here or anywhere.

And that's a crying shame.

Answer 9

When I wrote my initial query my thoughts on the status of social sciences on WB.SE were close to the Nosajimiki's answer, specifically this part:

This does not necessarily make those CtVers in any way bigoted, it just reveals that they do not know enough about the topic to know when facts and research may exist.

But after reading some of the posted answers my opinion changed. This is not entirely a case of ignorance. At least some part of the community (hard to say how big this faction is) has a very specific attitude:

• 'I do not know much about social sciences, their history, methodology, epistemology, and body of work. Thus I declare them as non-existent and their findings as undeclared fiction.' (probably, the most extreme variant; the original answer was edited to become slightly less radical after discussion in comments);

• 'I also do not know much about social sciences, their history, methodology, epistemology, and body of work. But I believe that their findings are not substantially different from my personal opinion because social sciences are not "sciencey" enough.' (this version is slightly more sophisticated due to the inclusion of scientism-based arguments).

I am not sure if anything can be done or said to change these attitudes.

Instead of engaging in a philosophical discussion about epistemology and methodology of social sciences, let me propose a rather simple solution for the VTC problem: Intellectual humility. There are only a few steps:

1. read a question (the entire question);
2. make sure that you did not miss anything;
3. if you do not understand the question or you doubt your expertise in the relevant area(s) do not vote (use Skip button if using review queues).

I think that it is a better solution than the ones proposed by other participants of this discussion because it is more universal and can be applied to every single question on this stack. It also does not require anything but a tiny bit of conscious effort.