8 ms·

Because the differences are small. Insignificant. If you take some group of 1000 people which has been selected in some way that skews towards intelligence, yo

• buboard 8y ago
  it's all about the edges of distribution though. If equality of the means mattered, countries across the world would be very similar economically, which unfortunately is not the case.
  • Arnt 8y ago
    It's ALL about the edges? What does that mean? What are the edges, and why does nothing else matter?
    • imron 8y ago
      The entire greater male variability theory (which is what is under discussion here) It claims that while averages for men and women are the same, you get more men at the high IQ end of the spectrum and also more men at the lower end of the IQ spectrum (which balance out the average). The whole argument is predicated on what happens at the edges of the normal distribution, not what happens at the center.
    • Knuffer123 8y ago
      I believe he refers to the fact that all "important" positions are selected from the bottom/top tier. We don't imprison random people from the population, we imprison the most aggressive (in case of violent crime at least). We hire people with top IQ for engineering and science related endevours. We promote people who work the hardest ("industriousness") The most ambitious people get the top jobs. It doesn't matter if on average two groups are the same for those qualifiers, if only the top 1% are selected, then you would expect which ever group has the flattest bell-curve distribution (and thus more "on the edge") to be over-represented (whether it is gender, "race", age). If it isn't, then racism/sexism/whateverism is at work. Caveat: with top IQ in engineering, an important factor that only people who "like things more than people" apply, other way around for loads of other fields.
    • buboard 8y ago
      because everyone is looking for the BEST e.g. engineers, not for the slightly-above-average.
      • pdkl95 8y ago
        Do they only hire from Lake Wobegon, where "all the children are above average"? /apologies to Garrison Keillor edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#The_Lake_Wobegon_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#The_Lake_Wobegon_... (and yes Keillor's "Lake Wobegon" stories [ibid.] are hilarious)
        • buboard 8y ago
          i don't follow, but sounds like something funny
    • PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
      Because that is where people specialize. If we ranked all humans by their programming skill and see which ones choose to become programmers, you'll find it is all around the tip. The average programming skill of the average programmer is far greater than the average programming skill of the average person. This applies to innate talents as well. People go into careers based on what they are good enough at. If you are literally average or below average at your field (compared to all people, not just all people interested in your field), your chance of success is extremely low. Therefore, if on some metric, you have two groups who are average but one with greater deviation, and then you select among the top 5% of the combined group, you will select more of the group with greater deviation even though the groups are average. You can test this with simulations if you want. This isn't much of a problem until you apply it to everyday demographics, at which point it can result in uncomfortable conclusions.
• sheepmullet 8y ago
  > you might find that the men have IQ 105.14 on average and the women 105.13 Why would you look at the average? Lots of jobs have an IQ floor.
  • Firadeoclus 8y ago
    I would say IQ is insufficient data to express a conceptual floor. After all, few jobs resemble an IQ test.
    • collyw 8y ago
      Job interviews on the other hand....
• mg96226 8y ago
  If the differences are insignificant then why are most sports segregated by gender? Why does the entire female FIDE rating distribution sit 200 points lower than the male distribution? The FIDE gap is not one that can be hand waved away as under-representation or discrimination or anything else. There are clearly differences between genders and races, and sometimes they are clearly significant. Whatever your views may be regarding how society should treat those differences, don't insult your own intelligence by claiming they don't exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_world_rankings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_world_rankings
  • kthejoker2 8y ago
    How can you say FIDE isn't just an under representation gap caused by culture or the federation itself? The number of boys who play chess dwarf the number of girls. If we took 1000 random 5 year olds and subjected them to 3 years of Magnus Carlsen style coaching I'm confident there would be no "FIDE gap."
    • mg96226 8y ago
      Because FIDE ratings encompasses the entire distribution, from left tail to right, across every participating nation, age group, and interest bracket. If the delta was due to males getting additional coaching, then the left tail of the distribution would be different in shape for males and females. It is not. Nor do more progressive countries show any signs of closing the gap. The best evidence we have right now suggests it is in fact inherent in gender. Just like the women's 100m record is a full second slower than men's. This kind of blatant ignorance of simple statistics and experiment design seems to be rife in the gender debate.
      • hef19898 8y ago
        That kind of ignorance goes both ways. I for my part become suspicious of any Argument that is using data with a limited amount of context and Details on how the data was collected and analysed. Especially if the aim is to have some kind of "proof" for the superiority of one group of people over another. Using your specific example of the 100m-record. Women's 100m 1988: 10.49s, men's 100m 1987: 9.93s. Less than a second difference. And I would argue that with a time of 10.49 even a women would have been competitive during the 60s. And now I stop this arguement, as long we are talking at this level of who is superior there is no way we reach the point where we talk about how we act on those, most of the time only perceived, differences. Which is the more important question, right?
• collyw 8y ago
  Do you think height differences between men and women are insignificant? They seem pretty obvious despite many exceptions.
  • hef19898 8y ago
    Yes, and guess what the genetic differences are also significant. XX vs XY, meaning women are less likely to suffer from genetic defects and deseases. Just how are These differences affecting the way a given Person can function in today's highly technical world? Except purely physical sports, at the very high end Level of athletes, that is? And even there athletes are not just devided by sex but also weight in case of martial arts. Even in traditionally "male" Domains like warfare a smaller size can be an Advantage. Take pilots of certain combat helicopters, if you are to big you can't fly them because you simply don't fit in the cockpit.
  • Arnt 8y ago
    If significant, then it should have effects noticeable in daily life, right? Otherwise you'd have a significant difference that signifies little or nothing. After almost 20 years of living with a woman 30cm smaller than myself, I can't make a long list of such effects. I easily reach some high shelves that my wife can't, I can see over most parked cars before crossing the street so I have a better view of the traffic, and she can snuggle under the bed cover but I cannot. That's about it. We're an easily noticeable couple and that thing about crossing the street was a big surprise, but if you ask about significant differences I have to say, no, not really. I'm sure the answer is different in some special contexts, perhaps garment production. But you asked me.
    • reversecs 8y ago
      If you are or know a very tall man, 6 6 or something, you might see this occur. When the man walks into a room and finds there is someone of his height, or someone even taller present, the man begins to feel a sense of insecurity about this challenger. Suddenly he isn't the tallest guy in the room. It feels like a threat, it feels like competition. I know this is a general feeling for certain. These men don't walk around thinking they are better than everyone else because they are taller but when they finally encounter someone of their height they are really sensitive to their presence. I can't imagine women feel the same way. I've actually heard that women have insecurity about being too tall. If ones security about they masculinity and femininity can be shaken by their height, but in totally different ways, there might be something real about it. I do know that a lot of guys are excluded from the saying pool because of their height, and I know a lot of women value height in attraction. The correlation of testosterone, power, and height in men are all in alignment. It's part of a male concept. The infamous David Reimer case is a great example of how boys and girls are just different. David adopted all of the male stereotypes even though he was being raised as a girl with hormone therapy, psychological reinforcements (to try to teach and convince him he was a girl) from toddler through primary School. He still wouldn't conform and his brother knew something was wrong. When they found out it was an experiment the brother killed himself and David began to identify as a man again, he even went on to marry a woman. He killed himself in his 40s I believe. The idea of a convenient truth and inconvenient truth need to be considered. I see it so much today that people are willing to twist facts and blow up supporting minutia to convince themselves that men and women have equal capabilities and have equal values as human beings (atleast evolutionarily).
• pl1234 8y ago
  "Because the differences are small. Insignificant" Some differences, like IQ between whites and blacks in America, can be one or more standard deviations.
• SamReidHughes 8y ago
  The differences are huge. Getting 800 on the math SAT (circa some years ago) is like a 2:1 gender ratio, and qualifying for the USAMO is maybe 10:1.