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For most of human history, men were pretty much forced to be the warriors and primary defenders of a village. Thus, there was strong genetic pressure to react q
by tabtab 8y ago
For most of human history, men were pretty much forced to be the warriors and primary defenders of a village. Thus, there was strong genetic pressure to react quick (or die). But women seem better at "find Waldo" kind of tasks, so perhaps there's a tradeoff. We are tuned for different specialties.
- AstralStorm 8y agoThe important part is how well tuned. In formal terms, how big is the overlap and effect size. If overlap is big or effect size is small, the difference will be irrelevant for most tasks. The question on thresholds for these values requires further major study. Such as devising a wide set of tasks and comparing performance in real tasks that putatively use it vs these measured motion detection differences. I'd start with catching a thrown ball. Avoiding getting touched by a moving object. Matching speed by movement. Etc. Additionally, it has to be seen if specific training can change those values and to what extent.
- jfk13 8y agoCareful; people have been known to lose their jobs for voicing such opinions.
- hokumguru 8y agoLike the whole James Damore fiasco at Google earlier late last year.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoNo. James Damore jumped from “there are differences between the sexes” to “women are less capable of my job”.
- stcredzero 8y agoI think his position can be better paraphrased as: There are preference differences between the sexes which we might want to take account of when we are organizing and designing technical workplaces. Oddly enough, this was the same position taken by YouTube and Google executives speaking in public shortly afterwards.
- compcoffee 8y agoCome on. What is the point of exaggerating his argument so? There are some holes in it without having to resort to an utter strawman.
- weberc2 8y agoThe holes in his argument didn’t justify his termination, however. Not sure if some folks are too attached to that outcome, but the accusations against Damore are beyond parody.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoI’m not saying he should be fired. I’m saying that it’s a misrepresentation to say that he only claimed that there are differences between the sexes in aggregate.
- weberc2 8y agoI wasn't actually speaking about you specifically, but where did Damore "go beyond claiming that there are differences between the sexes in aggregate" and specifically "women are less capable of [Damore's] job"? And how do you square that with the memo's disclaimers that he's speaking about population level differences? I think I've read that thing a dozen times now to try to find anything that resembles the claims Damore is accused of making, and I can never seem to find them...
- zarkov99 8y agoWould you be so kind as to quote any part of his paper that says this?
- manfredo 8y agoIncorrect. Damore's paper was focused on why women _choose_ not to go into tech, not that those women who go into tech are worse at it. Please do not promulgate this misrepresentation.
- presscast 8y agoIt's worth mentioning that the cognitive science community generally shuns evolutionary arguments, as they tend to be "just so" assertions. It's not that it's necessarily wrong, but rather unfalsifiable as such.
- weberc2 8y agoWho is “the cognitive community”, and does it include the evolutionary psychologists?
- lordCarbonFiber 8y agoThat's the parent posters point. There's no such thing as "evolutionary psychologists". At least so far as academics within psychology and neurology recognize it.
- jly 8y agoThese disciplines examine behavior from two different angles, one looking at more proximate causes while the other looks at ultimate causes. You can dismiss evolutionary psychology as irrelevant to other social or neurological cognitive sciences (which I would argue is also wrong), but it doesn't mean interesting and useful research is not being done.
- jessaustin 8y agoPaleontologists and archaeologists can do research by looking at old things and comparing them to other old things and also to current things. They can be very precise. "This process of this bone was so many millimeters wider, probably indicating a stronger attached muscle." "The clay in these pots comes from this particular remote river valley, indicating a trade network between these locations." Etc. How does a psychologist do anything like this? Mental processes of living things and how those respond to environment can be observed. How can mental processes of millennia ago be observed?
- 8y ago
- another-cuppa 8y agoIt's nothing to do with men being "forced" to do anything, it's simply that in every sexual species the selective pressures on males and females is very different. In mammals the females have to be strong enough to carry a baby until birth. While the males have to be stronger than all other males; long term health is much less important.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Raphmedia 8y agoWomen¹ are also much better at seeing slight color variances. E.g. differentiate between two similar red berries. ¹humans whose eyes are using cells that are filled female hormones, to be precise