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I have thought about this a bit.. here is IMO a pretty insightful quote into personality "When I say that Professor Lindzey’s left shoe is an “introvert,” ever

I have thought about this a bit.. here is IMO a pretty insightful quote into personality "When I say that Professor Lindzey’s left shoe is an “introvert,” everyone looks at his shoe as if it were something the shoe was responsible for. . . . Don’t look at that shoe! Look at me; I’m the one who is responsible for the statement." The mere existence of the word feminine implies there is a dichotomy between male & female worth observing. When we search for this difference, we find it (funny how our brains are good at finding whatever they search for..). That confirmation leads us to form the perspective "women & men are different" and now see the world through this construct. From then on, confirmation bias is enough to sustain the correctness of this concept. When a person who has no idea what feminine means, behaves in a "feminine" manner, others call them feminine (because this concept is near universal). That reinforces the concept, and like a virus the concept spreads to yet another person. So the more existence of femininity as a cultural construct in a sense makes it all the more real. It is partly a "social reality" [1].' Its like in cultures where the language has 1 word for 2 colors (from perspective of english speaker), they have observed that these people literally perceive less difference in the colors... so is the difference between blue/green a social construct or reality? The lines between social construct & reality are very blurry :p [1] From Sapiens - Yuval Harari

novembermike 9y ago
It's an interesting idea but a lot of the research is pointing against things that are near the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Culture is an influence, but it isn't normally close to a majority influence.
geezerjay 9y ago
> "When I say that Professor Lindzey’s left shoe is an “introvert,” everyone looks at his shoe as if it were something the shoe was responsible for. ...or perhaps people look at the shoe due to the claim, and they do so in order to evaluate for themselves if Professor Lindzey's statement has any merit or is in fact just bullshit. After all, either the shoe is "introvert" or it isn't, and the veracity of that claim does not depend on who stated it. There's a very good reason why the Royal Society's motto is "Nullius in verba" ( literally "take nobody's word for it"). Advocating that the message should be ignore and instead the focus should be shifted to the messenger is just absurd and goes against basic concepts of rational reasoning and even the scientific process itself. If militants of a particular social cause feels compelled to attack rational reasoning to even be in a position to make a case for their cause then that speaks volumes about the cause.
- zaptheimpaler 9y ago
  You missed the point entirely. There is no hard definition of introvert or feminine. There are no hard definitions and eternal truths when it comes to people evaluating other people. Only perceptions and judgements made by other people. The closest thing to a truth in this scenario is consensus. You can point to a test that grades someone 1-10 between introvert and extrovert. That test, too was made based on someones subjective idea of extraversion/introversion, formed by direct perception of people before they converted it into a set of questions with objective answers. One of the measures of the validity of the test will be inter-rater reliability, that is, how much do different people rating a person agree on the score they assign - consensus. If people are unable to broadly agree when rating the same person, it would not even be accepted as valid test. I'm honestly clueless what social cause you think I'm advocating for - i wasn't really advocating for any, just pointing out an idea I find interesting that seemed relevant here. Of course, your perception of how political my statement is may differ, informed by your own interpretations. But surely that is not objective reality and must be rejected by the rational thought you espouse.

novembermike 9y ago

It's an interesting idea but a lot of the research is pointing against things that are near the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Culture is an influence, but it isn't normally close to a majority influence.

geezerjay 9y ago

> "When I say that Professor Lindzey’s left shoe is an “introvert,” everyone looks at his shoe as if it were something the shoe was responsible for. ...or perhaps people look at the shoe due to the claim, and they do so in order to evaluate for themselves if Professor Lindzey's statement has any merit or is in fact just bullshit. After all, either the shoe is "introvert" or it isn't, and the veracity of that claim does not depend on who stated it. There's a very good reason why the Royal Society's motto is "Nullius in verba" ( literally "take nobody's word for it"). Advocating that the message should be ignore and instead the focus should be shifted to the messenger is just absurd and goes against basic concepts of rational reasoning and even the scientific process itself. If militants of a particular social cause feels compelled to attack rational reasoning to even be in a position to make a case for their cause then that speaks volumes about the cause.

zaptheimpaler 9y ago
You missed the point entirely. There is no hard definition of introvert or feminine. There are no hard definitions and eternal truths when it comes to people evaluating other people. Only perceptions and judgements made by other people. The closest thing to a truth in this scenario is consensus. You can point to a test that grades someone 1-10 between introvert and extrovert. That test, too was made based on someones subjective idea of extraversion/introversion, formed by direct perception of people before they converted it into a set of questions with objective answers. One of the measures of the validity of the test will be inter-rater reliability, that is, how much do different people rating a person agree on the score they assign - consensus. If people are unable to broadly agree when rating the same person, it would not even be accepted as valid test. I'm honestly clueless what social cause you think I'm advocating for - i wasn't really advocating for any, just pointing out an idea I find interesting that seemed relevant here. Of course, your perception of how political my statement is may differ, informed by your own interpretations. But surely that is not objective reality and must be rejected by the rational thought you espouse.