13 ms·

Systemisers are better at maths

103 points by lainon 8y ago

ve55 8y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizing_theory#Extreme_male_brain_theory_of_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizin... for more information on this concept
- ur-whale 8y ago
  Thanks for the link. After reading it, given the current political climate in Universities, I'm genuinely surprised Baron-Cohen has managed to retain his position after publishing a theory like that.
  - dan-robertson 8y ago
    He has a permanent fellowship. I think it would be quite hard for Trinity to get rid of him even if they wanted to (and they don’t really have any desire or pressure to do that anyway)
  - xxpor 8y ago
    Given Jordan Peterson still has a job, I find that hard to believe.
- trjordan 8y ago
  "A 2010 analysis of autism diagnoses in California did not find that autism clustered preferentially around areas rich in IT industry. Instead, it found that clusters tended to occur in areas where parents were older and educated to a higher level than were parents in surrounding areas."
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    That makes sense. More social stability, monotony. That's a comforting thing. IT systems are just systems that are predictable within some range of expected behavior without extreme variation, or if there is extreme variation, it's fun (usually).
    - mamon 8y ago
      My guess would be much simpler: older parents == worse genes. It is already proved that some disorders happen more often to children of parent aged 35+ (Down syndrome for instance)
      - bla2 8y ago
        Or older parents == better circumstances for kid, and better chances for kid with autism to be successful.
        s-shellfish 8y ago
        Ability to create stable mental framework.
      - SamReidHughes 8y ago
        Yep, this is the most prominent theory for why older fathers, particularly, are correlated with autism.
        A2017U1 8y ago
        It's not just autism, a whole range of disorders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_age_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_age_effect
Leary 8y ago
"The WAIS-R arithmetic score also depended on sex, being higher for men than for women (12.1 vs 11.1, t149 = 2.4, p = 0.02), and on occupation, being higher for participants in biological/physical than in social fields." Is this allowed?
- dnomad 8y ago
  No, it's not allowed, because this is pseudo-science. For future reference you can detect pseudo-science very easily because pseudo-science is just the formalization of non-observable entities. The "scientist" in this study posit the existence of many non-observable entities: "mathematical intelligence", "nonmathematical intelligence", "systemising mechanisms" and "empathising mechanisms" and "lawful systems." Then he posits a theory which relates these entities -- which, again, are not observable or real in any sense. Finally he collects real data to support his theories about all these imaginary entities. Now, data is always good, but you can see the problem here? No attempt is ever made to ground any of this in observable reality. It's garbage in, garbage out, from the get go. Unfortunately this sort of pseudo-science, as we've seen time and again, can be seized upon by all manner of propagandists eager to push their narrative. That's why this sort of nonsense -- which is non-sense in the purest form because we cannot observe or measure any of the entities supposedly at work here -- is very popular with the public but is regarded very suspiciously by actual scientists.
  - Scea91 8y ago
    What are you talking about? WAIS-R arithmetic score is an observable entity.
  - j88439h84 8y ago
    > formalization of non-observable entities. Like most of mathematics and computer science?
    - dnomad 8y ago
      Mathematics is not science nor would any mathematician claim to be a scientist. Pseudo-science necessarily adopts a scientific pose hence the name. None of this is particularly controversial but you can see by the downvotes how committed people are to their various self-serving narratives.
sophistication 8y ago
The empathizing–systemizing theory seems to be on shaky ground: http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164069138209/in-lieu-of-a-longer-post-ive-been-planning-to http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164069138209/in-lieu-o... http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164123186154/baron-cohen-miscellany http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164123186154/baron-coh... The weirdest result might be that a pathology that one would ascribe to the empathizing side, borderline personality disorder (BPD), actually positively correlates with measures of systemizing, so there is a strange overlap between BPD and autism, the pathology one associates with systemizing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590952/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590952/ What's more, there is no clear sex difference in empathy: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0179336 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... --- More reliable and pronounced sex differences have been found on a similar scale, namely interest in things vs interest in people and that has also been linked to the gender gap in STEM: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00189/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0018... Interestingly, some sex differences in cognitive processing disappear when one simply changes the domain to be more focused on people (e.g. rotation of dolls vs rotation of abstract shapes): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608015001818 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104160801... So the underlying difference here might simply be in innate preferences to process information that is in a social context vs an arbitrary context. Autists have a lower preference for the social context, which is essentially a difference in value function, so value from epistemic/predictive accuracy independent of norms gets more weight. It looks like systemizing emerges in both extremes of the people vs things dimension (though more likely in the latter), explaining both the NCBI study above and the Nature article linked here. Looking only at interest in people is a cleaner approach IMO (not a cognitive scientist though, so take this with a grain of salt). Systemizing seems to basically capture something like abstract thinking, but, guess what, you can also think abstractly about social problems. The crucial point is rather whether it actually feels pleasurable to delve into extremely obscure worlds of symbols and concepts, far removed from ordinary social experience and norms, and here the sex difference is quite pronounced (about one standard deviation). Notably this sex difference appears to be fully determined by presence of prenatal androgen (a male sex hormone such as testosterone), and a preference for gendered toys (dolls vs cars) also been found in some primate species: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb00028.x http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb0... https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-toys/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-pr...
BloodyHands 8y ago
when nature gets into the bullying game, you know the scientists are neither reputable nor honest the idea that nature would call mathematicians names is quite amazing, this is the last group of motherfuckers I thought would disparage the reputation of mathematicians this is proof that nature is nothing but schoolyard bullies that know nothing and are willing to pick on people who study simply for the fact that they study nature has demonstrated a hatred of mathematicians nature has demonstrated an arrogant attitude toward mathematicians nature has demonstrated a willingness to belittle and denigrate the work of mathematicians as > the activities of autistic people as if the mathematicians were the umpa-lumpas and nature were Willy Wonka's chocolate factory the arrogant and dismissive attitude of the scientists toward the mathematicians shows that the scientists do not respect mathematics I thought they would have had more professional courtesy. Apparently not.

103 points by lainon 8y ago

ve55 8y ago

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizing_theory#Extreme_male_brain_theory_of_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizin... for more information on this concept

ur-whale 8y ago
Thanks for the link. After reading it, given the current political climate in Universities, I'm genuinely surprised Baron-Cohen has managed to retain his position after publishing a theory like that.
- dan-robertson 8y ago
  He has a permanent fellowship. I think it would be quite hard for Trinity to get rid of him even if they wanted to (and they don’t really have any desire or pressure to do that anyway)
- xxpor 8y ago
  Given Jordan Peterson still has a job, I find that hard to believe.
trjordan 8y ago
"A 2010 analysis of autism diagnoses in California did not find that autism clustered preferentially around areas rich in IT industry. Instead, it found that clusters tended to occur in areas where parents were older and educated to a higher level than were parents in surrounding areas."
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  That makes sense. More social stability, monotony. That's a comforting thing. IT systems are just systems that are predictable within some range of expected behavior without extreme variation, or if there is extreme variation, it's fun (usually).
  - mamon 8y ago
    My guess would be much simpler: older parents == worse genes. It is already proved that some disorders happen more often to children of parent aged 35+ (Down syndrome for instance)
    - bla2 8y ago
      Or older parents == better circumstances for kid, and better chances for kid with autism to be successful.
      - s-shellfish 8y ago
        Ability to create stable mental framework.
    - SamReidHughes 8y ago
      Yep, this is the most prominent theory for why older fathers, particularly, are correlated with autism.
      - A2017U1 8y ago
        It's not just autism, a whole range of disorders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_age_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_age_effect

Leary 8y ago

"The WAIS-R arithmetic score also depended on sex, being higher for men than for women (12.1 vs 11.1, t149 = 2.4, p = 0.02), and on occupation, being higher for participants in biological/physical than in social fields." Is this allowed?

dnomad 8y ago
No, it's not allowed, because this is pseudo-science. For future reference you can detect pseudo-science very easily because pseudo-science is just the formalization of non-observable entities. The "scientist" in this study posit the existence of many non-observable entities: "mathematical intelligence", "nonmathematical intelligence", "systemising mechanisms" and "empathising mechanisms" and "lawful systems." Then he posits a theory which relates these entities -- which, again, are not observable or real in any sense. Finally he collects real data to support his theories about all these imaginary entities. Now, data is always good, but you can see the problem here? No attempt is ever made to ground any of this in observable reality. It's garbage in, garbage out, from the get go. Unfortunately this sort of pseudo-science, as we've seen time and again, can be seized upon by all manner of propagandists eager to push their narrative. That's why this sort of nonsense -- which is non-sense in the purest form because we cannot observe or measure any of the entities supposedly at work here -- is very popular with the public but is regarded very suspiciously by actual scientists.
- Scea91 8y ago
  What are you talking about? WAIS-R arithmetic score is an observable entity.
- j88439h84 8y ago
  > formalization of non-observable entities. Like most of mathematics and computer science?
  - dnomad 8y ago
    Mathematics is not science nor would any mathematician claim to be a scientist. Pseudo-science necessarily adopts a scientific pose hence the name. None of this is particularly controversial but you can see by the downvotes how committed people are to their various self-serving narratives.

sophistication 8y ago

The empathizing–systemizing theory seems to be on shaky ground: http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164069138209/in-lieu-of-a-longer-post-ive-been-planning-to http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164069138209/in-lieu-o... http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164123186154/baron-cohen-miscellany http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164123186154/baron-coh... The weirdest result might be that a pathology that one would ascribe to the empathizing side, borderline personality disorder (BPD), actually positively correlates with measures of systemizing, so there is a strange overlap between BPD and autism, the pathology one associates with systemizing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590952/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590952/ What's more, there is no clear sex difference in empathy: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0179336 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... --- More reliable and pronounced sex differences have been found on a similar scale, namely interest in things vs interest in people and that has also been linked to the gender gap in STEM: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00189/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0018... Interestingly, some sex differences in cognitive processing disappear when one simply changes the domain to be more focused on people (e.g. rotation of dolls vs rotation of abstract shapes): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608015001818 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104160801... So the underlying difference here might simply be in innate preferences to process information that is in a social context vs an arbitrary context. Autists have a lower preference for the social context, which is essentially a difference in value function, so value from epistemic/predictive accuracy independent of norms gets more weight. It looks like systemizing emerges in both extremes of the people vs things dimension (though more likely in the latter), explaining both the NCBI study above and the Nature article linked here. Looking only at interest in people is a cleaner approach IMO (not a cognitive scientist though, so take this with a grain of salt). Systemizing seems to basically capture something like abstract thinking, but, guess what, you can also think abstractly about social problems. The crucial point is rather whether it actually feels pleasurable to delve into extremely obscure worlds of symbols and concepts, far removed from ordinary social experience and norms, and here the sex difference is quite pronounced (about one standard deviation). Notably this sex difference appears to be fully determined by presence of prenatal androgen (a male sex hormone such as testosterone), and a preference for gendered toys (dolls vs cars) also been found in some primate species: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb00028.x http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb0... https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-toys/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-pr...

BloodyHands 8y ago

when nature gets into the bullying game, you know the scientists are neither reputable nor honest the idea that nature would call mathematicians names is quite amazing, this is the last group of motherfuckers I thought would disparage the reputation of mathematicians this is proof that nature is nothing but schoolyard bullies that know nothing and are willing to pick on people who study simply for the fact that they study nature has demonstrated a hatred of mathematicians nature has demonstrated an arrogant attitude toward mathematicians nature has demonstrated a willingness to belittle and denigrate the work of mathematicians as > the activities of autistic people as if the mathematicians were the umpa-lumpas and nature were Willy Wonka's chocolate factory the arrogant and dismissive attitude of the scientists toward the mathematicians shows that the scientists do not respect mathematics I thought they would have had more professional courtesy. Apparently not.