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It's not really reasonable to take as a strong prior (or null hypothesis if you are that sort) that two distributions are equal. Why would they be? Further, le

It's not really reasonable to take as a strong prior (or null hypothesis if you are that sort) that two distributions are equal. Why would they be? Further, lets think of all the distributions where we can easily measure - upper body strength and height are two examples. The male/female distributions are, in fact, not equal. Same for the distributions of mathematical ability. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/321/5888/494.summary http://science.sciencemag.org/content/321/5888/494.summary https://www.jstor.org/stable/2889145?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/2889145?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21038941 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21038941 http://www.ams.org/notices/201201/rtx120100010p.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/201201/rtx120100010p.pdf It seems like you want to simply assume your pet hypothesis to be true - with no real evidence for it - while demanding a high level of rigor from those you disagree with. See Scott Alexander's excellent takedown of this fallacious rhetorical strategy here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands...

nostrebored 10y ago
We know that there are sex specific physical characteristics that differ between men and women. Nobody is arguing that's not true. Extending these to mental differences however is a stretch and not easily observed. The people with the pet hypothesis here are those who assume without causal evidence that there is a difference in cognition between men and women. Neuroscience is converging on the fact that sex specific differences in the brain are minimal. [0] Differences in the brain have been observed between taxi drivers and the general population. We clearly wouldn't assume that they were born to be taxi drivers, we would place the causation on neuroplasticity. Even then, neuroscience is a very immature field. Neurobollocks is an entertaining read. [0] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/is-the-brain-gendereda-q-a-with-harvard-s-catherine-dulac/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/is-the-brai...
- Pyxl101 10y ago
  > We know that there are sex specific physical characteristics that differ between men and women. Nobody is arguing that's not true. Extending these to mental differences however is a stretch and not easily observed. Yes, it is easily observed and has been extensively studied. Wikipedia has several articles about "Sex differences in ..." on different topics. For example, see "Sex differences in intelligence" [1] or "Sex differences in human psychology". Lots of studies are linked. One that I recall is "Sex differences in human neonatal social perception" [2]: > Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. [...] 102 human neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object). Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin. Another example is "Sex differences in parking are affected by biological and social factors" [3], which found that men are better at parking cars: > The stereotype of women’s limited parking skills is deeply anchored in modern culture. Although laboratory tests prove men’s average superiority in visuospatial tasks and parking requires complex, spatial skills, underlying mechanisms remain unexplored. Here, we investigated performance of beginners (nine women, eight men) and more experienced drivers (21 women, 27 men) at different parking manoeuvres. Furthermore, subjects conducted the mental rotation test and self-assessed their parking skills. We show that men park more accurately and especially faster than women. Another known result is that male IQ is higher on average has higher variance than female IQ. The intelligence study "Sex differences on the progressive matrices: a meta-analysis" [4] concluded: > Results showed that there is no difference among children aged 6–14 years, but that males obtain higher [mean IQ] from the age of 15 through to old age. Among adults, the male advantage is 0.33d equivalent to 5 IQ points. These results disconfirm the frequent assertion than there are no sex differences on the progressive matrices and support a developmental theory that a male advantage appears from the age of 15 years. "Brother–sister differences in the g factor in intelligence" [5] claims that male IQ is not higher on average, but has "substantially greater variance". If male IQ had greater variance, this means we would expect that there are more men than women with very high IQs (as well as more men with very low IQs). The section about current research in [1] has more. These are just a small sample of peer-reviewed research articles examining mental differences between men and women. There may not be consensus on all topics, but there is on some, such as the higher variance of male IQs, and it's being actively studied. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligenc... [2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300000321 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300... [3] http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/biopsy/papers/Wolf_Ocklenburg2010.pdf http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/biopsy/papers/Wolf_Ocklenburg2... [4] http://www.uam.es/personal_pdi/psicologia/pei/download/Lynn2004.pdf http://www.uam.es/personal_pdi/psicologia/pei/download/Lynn2... [5] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606001115 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606...
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I agree it's not easily observed. What I'm disagreeing about is the idea that if two numbers are not easily observed, they must be assumed to be equal. Similarly, it's unreasonable to assume that the number of dollars in my wallet is equal to the number of dollars in your wallet unless someone can come up with p<0.001 proof otherwise. Also, on this topic, I don't trust any pop-science writing (such as Scientific American) or journalism about science papers. I don't even trust the abstracts of science papers. Take a look at my citations about mathematical ability - unless you look at the data tables, you won't actually realize that those citations provide strong evidence of significant differences in math ability between men and women. For example, consider the article with the title "Gender Similarities Characterize Math Performance", while the first data table shows a variance ratio of 1.11-1.21 and the second table shows the result of this in the right tail. Unfortunately scientists need to tread very carefully and obscure the "wrong" results - loudly proclaiming these results is a career limiting move.

nostrebored 10y ago

We know that there are sex specific physical characteristics that differ between men and women. Nobody is arguing that's not true. Extending these to mental differences however is a stretch and not easily observed. The people with the pet hypothesis here are those who assume without causal evidence that there is a difference in cognition between men and women. Neuroscience is converging on the fact that sex specific differences in the brain are minimal. [0] Differences in the brain have been observed between taxi drivers and the general population. We clearly wouldn't assume that they were born to be taxi drivers, we would place the causation on neuroplasticity. Even then, neuroscience is a very immature field. Neurobollocks is an entertaining read. [0] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/is-the-brain-gendereda-q-a-with-harvard-s-catherine-dulac/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/is-the-brai...

Pyxl101 10y ago
> We know that there are sex specific physical characteristics that differ between men and women. Nobody is arguing that's not true. Extending these to mental differences however is a stretch and not easily observed. Yes, it is easily observed and has been extensively studied. Wikipedia has several articles about "Sex differences in ..." on different topics. For example, see "Sex differences in intelligence" [1] or "Sex differences in human psychology". Lots of studies are linked. One that I recall is "Sex differences in human neonatal social perception" [2]: > Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. [...] 102 human neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object). Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin. Another example is "Sex differences in parking are affected by biological and social factors" [3], which found that men are better at parking cars: > The stereotype of women’s limited parking skills is deeply anchored in modern culture. Although laboratory tests prove men’s average superiority in visuospatial tasks and parking requires complex, spatial skills, underlying mechanisms remain unexplored. Here, we investigated performance of beginners (nine women, eight men) and more experienced drivers (21 women, 27 men) at different parking manoeuvres. Furthermore, subjects conducted the mental rotation test and self-assessed their parking skills. We show that men park more accurately and especially faster than women. Another known result is that male IQ is higher on average has higher variance than female IQ. The intelligence study "Sex differences on the progressive matrices: a meta-analysis" [4] concluded: > Results showed that there is no difference among children aged 6–14 years, but that males obtain higher [mean IQ] from the age of 15 through to old age. Among adults, the male advantage is 0.33d equivalent to 5 IQ points. These results disconfirm the frequent assertion than there are no sex differences on the progressive matrices and support a developmental theory that a male advantage appears from the age of 15 years. "Brother–sister differences in the g factor in intelligence" [5] claims that male IQ is not higher on average, but has "substantially greater variance". If male IQ had greater variance, this means we would expect that there are more men than women with very high IQs (as well as more men with very low IQs). The section about current research in [1] has more. These are just a small sample of peer-reviewed research articles examining mental differences between men and women. There may not be consensus on all topics, but there is on some, such as the higher variance of male IQs, and it's being actively studied. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligenc... [2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300000321 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300... [3] http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/biopsy/papers/Wolf_Ocklenburg2010.pdf http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/biopsy/papers/Wolf_Ocklenburg2... [4] http://www.uam.es/personal_pdi/psicologia/pei/download/Lynn2004.pdf http://www.uam.es/personal_pdi/psicologia/pei/download/Lynn2... [5] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606001115 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606...
yummyfajitas 10y ago
I agree it's not easily observed. What I'm disagreeing about is the idea that if two numbers are not easily observed, they must be assumed to be equal. Similarly, it's unreasonable to assume that the number of dollars in my wallet is equal to the number of dollars in your wallet unless someone can come up with p<0.001 proof otherwise. Also, on this topic, I don't trust any pop-science writing (such as Scientific American) or journalism about science papers. I don't even trust the abstracts of science papers. Take a look at my citations about mathematical ability - unless you look at the data tables, you won't actually realize that those citations provide strong evidence of significant differences in math ability between men and women. For example, consider the article with the title "Gender Similarities Characterize Math Performance", while the first data table shows a variance ratio of 1.11-1.21 and the second table shows the result of this in the right tail. Unfortunately scientists need to tread very carefully and obscure the "wrong" results - loudly proclaiming these results is a career limiting move.