I don't want to maximize the number of good books at all cost, and I don't want people writing for a living and neglecting everything else, and I don't lie.

As long as there are more decent books to read than hours in the day, who cares?

"AFTER we correct for the still-existing artificial bias below the disparity"

You are making the assumption that there is one.

But we are not the character, we are the reader, and we need to "see" the scene, we need to be given hints and details that make sense from our multi-character perspective of the world.

It is also a cat and mouse game between the reader and the author as we try to puzzle out what will happen with a larger view than that of any character. Later a dagger may have a symbol on it or design that is reminiscent of this house or that and provide a hint as to how that item will play out later but the character who finds it may know nothing of it and less astute readers may not either. But for those paying attention, the author provided a hint of a foreshadowing.

It sounds like you want the literary equivalent of an action movie. Which is somewhat more deep than the deepest of films which you must watch and pay attention to every moment of to understand what is going on. Quality literature should be somewhat, and by somewhat I mean dramatically, more substantial than that. An epic should be so encompassing that on the 5th read you are discovering things you missed before.

If you don't like an extremely high paced and action packed epic like a song of fire and ice I can only imagine what you'd think about something with more depth like The Wheel of Time.

Obviously yes. Predictable = deserved.

That's actually a good point. Someone indicated they require at least 10% read, they should keep that threshold and then use word count read for distribution.

Otherwise you are rewarding fast and light reads like the current crappy 99 centers more than actual substantive epic novels.

"Maybe, but word count doesn't equal quality. If rewarded for word count, people would quickly start adding lots of filler to game the system."

Yes but you reward for the words read, not the words written.

"I know I would have enjoyed the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series a lot more if the editor had trimmed the books to 60% or so."

That makes one of you. I for one do not want all my books reduced to cliffnotes. A Song of Fire and Ice is written by an expert scholar of medieval history and his take on foods, banners, clothing, weaponry, mannerisms, etc form a rich and fascinating world.

But given access to a large library of books at their fingertips for a low monthly fee more people might choose to spend their time reading.

Which is exactly why the summary is wrong about this meaning you shouldn't promote good books from other authors. The more quality works the more subscribers and books take time to write so if you want those subscribers to be around when your next book comes out you need other authors to fill the gap.

I spend far more time with nothing left to read than having to choose between books.

I think they should distribute on a combination of word count read (with page count used to estimate word count so illustrated works and non-fiction get weighted fairly) and subsequent star rating for pot distribution.

You shouldn't pay out more for getting your 5 100 page books read than you do for a read of a 500 page epic. If anything it should be the epic that gets the higher payout. It takes longer and is more difficult to write a quality epic novel than a few quick reads.

The cap on the pot is not imposed by the one controlling the pot, the cap on the pot is a function of the number of subscribers. It is still in your interest to promote the books of others because more quality and varied content means more subscribers and therefore a larger potential pot.

It does change the industry. It is no longer a function of publishers to pick the winners but a function of readers. Everyone can publish. I don't know if Amazon considers reader ratings in their pot distribution but they should.

If 1/50 people write one book in their life, and 1/50 of them are good, and all of them get published because there is zero barrier to entry, we would have so many more books that were good than we do now.

People have more free time and better access to distribution than before. You're not entitled to your streetlamp lighting job, you know.

Yes, with the understanding that what is true of whole is not always true of individual elements. I don't have a stat for the exceptions to the rule but it is rather large, I'd guess something 10-30% of individuals of either gender. So it IS critical that as a society we don't make assumptions or put up barriers that hinder the 10-30% of the population that will be wired to pursue the same things as 70-90% of the other gender.

We just shouldn't be giving them an advantage or trying to artificially correct beyond that disparity.

Maybe. But why is it we need to get young girls interested in programming? So long as we've removed the barriers for girls that choose to enter a field I say mission accomplished. What is the benefit? Increased opportunity for programmers to encounter mates? Study after study shows there is no lack of programmers in the United States only an increased desire to import workers on visas who can't freely move between job opportunities and thereby reduce the impact of competition on salaries.

Making sure girls can choose to pursue anything they like is important. But there is no reason we should try to influence what girls choose to pursue. And if, as a society, we were going to do that we should be trying to encourage them to choose what benefits society the most. It is, and presumably always will be, best for our society if girls choose to stay home and raise a psychologically functional next generation (at least if those girls choose to have children).

Sure, but does it matter? We shouldn't adopt the objective of eliminating cultural bias just for the sake of doing it. That's what Europeans tried to do to Native Americans and erase their culture.

If there is an actual barrier to someone choosing a career that is a problem. But there is no barrier here, some just feel that people should be making different choices. That top talent is pursuing something else instead and benefiting our society.

Science has shown the female brain is wired to have increased aptitude for social dynamics and unsurprisingly it is fields along those lines that women often choose to pursue. Pursuing these fields would be a downhill path of natural aptitude for most women even if they are perfectly capable of excelling in other fields. People certainly have greater satisfaction pursuing things they are naturally good at. Have you considered that the cultural bias of women in the UK and US might be steering women toward pursuits in a way that aligns with the greatest overall interests of women?

I definitely have mixed feelings about increasing diversification. I don't want to see any individual facing a societal uphill battle in pursuing their dreams. But that increased aptitude for social dynamics also happens to be exactly what is most beneficial in managing a family and raising psychologically functional children. Women with this aptitude are the rule not the exception, men are the exception and not the rule. If every couple with children has the parent with the most social aptitude stay home and properly raise functional children the net result should statistically be far more males than females in the workplace with an increasing disparity peaking somewhere in roles of higher seniority occupied by individuals 35+ yrs old. And sure enough as we've seen increased gender diversity in the workplace we've seen increased psychological dysfunction in children. Worse we are getting more and more entrenched in an economy that depends on dual income households. Most women I talk to who have a child or want to have a child say they want to stay home with that child, most families can't the loss of income.

"But in this case, the predominance of one gender in all STEM fields does indeed demonstrate that something is actually broken and needs fixing.

Nature, science, and common sense show that while consensus provides great short-term efficiency, diversity is universally superior to monoculture in the long term."

Nature, science, and common sense all agree that STEM are very much all heavily built on a particular flavor of mental processing and also that male and female brains are literally wired differently.

Female brains are wired to trade off an unknown capacity in exchange for superior group dynamics processing. The vast majority of those with an apptitude for STEM show impaired social skills, aka group dynamics processing. Has it ever occurred to you the two are related?

"There does indeed exist a systemic cultural bias pushing women out of technical fields."

Do you have any actual evidence of this? Either these fields are legitimately gender agnostic, in which case gender is an irrelevant characteristic and diversifying adds no value or they are not gender agnostic in which case the most likely explanation for male dominance of the field is that it lends itself to the wiring of the male brain. Either way, no pro-active action is required.

Also, is your hypothetical bias one which leads to women choosing other fields or one in which others push them out? So long as a woman who chooses to pursue a STEM career and make the same social and family relation sacrifices as a male does not meet any more active opposition than a male there is nothing to fix as no individual is unfairly discriminated against.

"To see this demonstrated mathematically"

Cute but not actually valid. The problem is the assumption of benefit to shape diversification. Diversification for it's own sake is not beneficial. As above with technology, if race and gender have no impact on performance in a career as we assume then diversification of race and gender carry no benefits. We can safely ignore gender altogether in all such areas and group all participants as "people."

It is false to assume we should have an even distribution of squares and triangles for it's own sake. We should only do so if there is a benefit and as long as every shape is free to go wherever it likes without resistance any energy spent trying to pro-actively diversify them is wasted effort that could have been utilized for something which does provide an actual benefit.

Trying to force diversification that individuals don't actually want is no different than what anglo europeans tried to do with native americans. It destroys culture, if females have a culture which encourages socially focused endeavors over STEM who are you to assume you know better and try to destroy their culture? If males have a culture that values STEM over socially focused endeavors and males and females exist in roughly equal parts that IS diversification, diversification between pursuit of objective fields vs socially focused interests.

There is no question that our society historically undervalued women and unfairly biased against them. But on the large scale, there is no evidence we are as a society or species actually better off with the consequences of fixing that problem. Actually, if anything the result is that our economy is built on the concept of dual income families now, which means no parent staying home to guide and raise children.

Do you really think that gender income disparity or diversification of a non-functional criteria like gender in STEM is more important than the functional development of future generations of our species? I don't. Women should be able to choose to pursue whatever they wish without barrier (or advantage) but our species and our children are best served if they generally choose to be stay at home moms. It is impossible to have an even distribution of genders in the workplace and the majority of women choosing to pursue the career that benefits our society the most.