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Can someone (likely younger than me) explain to me why the concept of gender-associated cognitive differences has become so controversial, and why the “blank sl

Can someone (likely younger than me) explain to me why the concept of gender-associated cognitive differences has become so controversial, and why the “blank slate hypothesis” is the only one considered acceptable? This was an entirely different story when I was in college. 90% of all nurses are women, does that mean that 100% of the difference (from the 50/50 ideal-world gendersplit assumption) are men purely socialized not to do that? I have no interest in sports, yet 90+% of men seem to, but I kinda get it, it makes sense to me that most men would be into that. And then we get to programming, and raw interest in mechanisms... and possible correlations to gender with that, and all hell breaks loose. Have all the “monkeys prefer gender-stereotypical human toys” studies been discredited? You can’t IMHO use the socialization argument there: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ Happy to hear anyone out on this though.

gotocake 8y ago
There are two main reasons I’m aware of. First, a certain kind of person tries to make a deeply sexist argument and reaches for “science” to back it up. The overall experience with that kind of thing is profoundly negative, and it has a pretty grim history, so there are strong reactions to it. It’s true that well-intentioned people do ask uncomfortable questions, but especially online they’re dwarfed by trolls and people arguing in bad faith. All told this isn’t an insurmountable problem, and more and better research can help to shine some light on the issue. It’s also not impossible to determine whether or not someone is pushing a predetermined agenda and using a given study (while ignoring others) as a bludgeon. The second, radioactive topic centers around trans people. I’m not going to touch that topic with a 10 foot pole, because online the discussion rarely develops more nuance than mysticism dressed up as science on one side, and bigotry dressed up as “common sense” arguments on the other. All told it makes for a difficult topic to discuss in good faith, absent agendas on or offline, but online it’s pure poison.
- thisone 8y ago
  Arguments also tend to start (unstatedly) from the baseline that "male is the default and most valuable" which will get backs up.
  - fromthestart 8y ago
    >Arguments also tend to start (unstatedly) from the baseline that "male is the default and most valuable" Given that these assertions are unstated, they sound more like a manifestation of insecurity on the part of the listener. Conversely, one could speculate that responses to questions of equality are frequently taken personally and met defensively, with resulting rationalizations, like the one you listed, of improper emotional reasoning. This is only a controversial subject because people feel that there are potential negative implications to them as individuals, even though the rammifications are purely for distributions, which laymen tend not to understand, hence the personal responses.
  - pmarreck 8y ago
    "Unstated" things are not evidence. That's the Conspiracy Fallacy. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/74/Conspiracy-Theory https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla... "Look at all these people not talking about how racist they are! Clearly they're all hiding something."
- malvosenior 8y ago
  > It’s true that well-intentioned people do ask uncomfortable questions, but especially online they’re dwarfed by trolls and people arguing in bad faith. Why is it trolling or arguing "in bad faith" to think that there are inherent differences in gender? The vast majority of people alive today believe this. People who attempt to back up their intuitive knowledge with science seem to be the opposite of trolls. It gets tiresome to have entire swaths of mainstream opinion labeled as "bad faith" (which ironically is bad faith).
  - gotocake 8y ago
    You’ve quoted a single sentence out of two paragraphs, and then extrapolated from that fragment something I didn’t actually say. Even putting it in as neutral and fair terms as I could, I should have guessed that anything on this topic would strongly resemble a Rorschach test to some. Please understand that since the thrust of my point was the futility of discussing this online, I’m leaving my response at this.
  - mduncs 8y ago
    > People who attempt to back up their intuitive knowledge with science seem to be the opposite of trolls. Consider the difference between seeing if your intuitions reflect science, and trying to justify your intuitions with science. If you go looking for information that matches parts of your internal biases, can you reasonably say you would change your mind if you found information that conflicted your view? What if ten articles out of twenty reflected your view? What if one article out of twenty reflected your view? I think you should reread the portion of their comment about using science as a cudgel to see why it can be bad to consider intuition the guiding principle of research.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      I think part of healthy debate (and its true value) is that the person with opposing views would also present science and data to back up their argument. Instead what we get is an instant fall back to "trolls, arguing in bad faith...". If you have data or research that backs up your position, you definitely should post it and compare it to any other data that comes from the opposing view. And yes, I would change my mind if I was presented with credible evidence.
- mancerayder 8y ago
  Granted, but should 'purpose' of a scientific research project or conclusion, you know, matter? If the science is bad, it won't get published or it will get published and destroyed. Why should politics get in the way of our accumulation of data? Get the data first, worry about interpretations after that. The moral question should not block / impede the inquiry of a topic and quest for more data. Perhaps, with the possible exception of some superweapon or bio weapon research? Didn't we learn anything at all from the grim history of religious authorities impeding scientific inquiry because the conclusions were uncomfortable? What exactly is going on in the last 5 or so years that we've decided to spurn Reason?
  - gotocake 8y ago
    You seem to have read something in my post that wasn’t there, namely that I was suggesting some kind of restriction on research, rather than what I did say, which was the need for more research. I can only guess how you interpreted my post in such a way.
    - pmarreck 8y ago
      > I can only guess how you interpreted my post in such a way. Hey, man. Insinuation/assumption. This is exactly the sort of remark that quickly toxifies the discussion. Keep it rational.
      - gotocake 8y ago
        That wasn’t my intention, I just meant that I didn’t understand the reasoning, not to infer something sinister.
        pmarreck 8y ago
        Ah. I've seen wording like that from people trying to insinuate that the person has a racist/sexist worldview that they're either covering up or trying to intellectually rationalize. Or as a subtle dig on their intelligence. :)
  - 8y ago
- stcredzero 8y ago
  It’s true that well-intentioned people do ask uncomfortable questions, but especially online they’re dwarfed by trolls and people arguing in bad faith. Then isn't it incumbent on people to carefully consider what's being said and not knee-jerk react? As far as I can tell, all of the knee-jerk reactions in either direction simply add to the noise and outrage. All told it makes for a difficult topic to discuss in good faith, absent agendas on or offline, but online it’s pure poison. It makes a lot more sense to think of the whole situation as an exercise in the generation of outrage and toxicity in the service of attention and virality. Given that outrage is the easiest way to achieve virality, it doesn't take some sort of underlying conspiracy to explain this. We've created a sociopolitical milieu combined with networks which create these perverse incentives. The same combination amplifies the most toxic and nonsensical voices, and acts to disguise intelligent voices as nonsense. The solution is for intelligent and reasonable voices to fight back against the nonsense. This means 1) calling out the excesses of one's own side and 2) uniting with voices of reason across the aisle. The opponent who values truth and with whom one can reasonably disagree with is much preferable to the sociopath no one can reason with because they are really motivated by power stemming from outrage.
- fwip 8y ago
  It seems like the research shows that, pre-transition, a trans person's brain resembles that of the "target" sex more closely than their assigned sex. From what I understand, this effect is more pronounced in trans men than trans women.
  - pmarreck 8y ago
    You're presupposing sex-based brain differences, which is also taboo.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >There are two main reasons I’m aware of. First, a certain kind of person tries to make a deeply sexist argument and reaches for “science” to back it up. The overall experience with that kind of thing is profoundly negative, and it has a pretty grim history, so there are strong reactions to it. Whatever certain kind of non-scientific persons do politically should have zero effect on scientific output. If X is a scientific fact, scientists are not OK to say that it doesn't hold, even if people regularly abuse X.
- pmarreck 8y ago
  > First, a certain kind of person tries to make a deeply sexist argument and reaches for “science” to back it up. Disclaimer: I've debated racists on Twitter, with moderate success. I started by presuming that their correlational data wasn't invalid. Then I showed them this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence while stating that I couldn't waste time talking to any of them unless they were over 6' (for men) or 5'8" (for women) because going too far below that would be beneath my eminent intelligence as a person who towers at 6'3". They magically shut up soon after this. You see, there's a difference between seeing a correlation, and acting on it. Racists want to act on correlations (oppressing nonwhites), but oddly, they wouldn't think the same about oppressing short people, even though that evidence is at least as plain-as-day. This is all besides the fact that correlational data is weak to begin with.
ajhurliman 8y ago
Paul Graham had an essay[0] from 2004 that made the claim that taboos are created by semi-powerful groups to control situations. Taboo things aren't obviously wrong (like saying I'm 10' tall, it's not offensive, it's just incorrect); they might have some truth to them and they endanger a certain group's position. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
- VanPossum 8y ago
  Case in point about "a certain group's position", it seems that the underlying stance of "the gendered brain doesnt exist" is: difference equals inferiority. Which of course is both absurd and reactionary. Saying that there is no difference and gender/behaviour is 100% the result of social pressure basicly means that for example gays are also conditioned, so this "theory" actually agrees with nutcase things like gay conversion therapy.
  - pmarreck 8y ago
    > Saying that there is no difference and gender/behaviour is 100% the result of social pressure basicly means that for example gays are also conditioned, so this "theory" actually agrees with nutcase things like gay conversion therapy. oh wow. this is a great point.
n4r9 8y ago
One possibility is how it relates to the debate around the gender earnings/wage gap. There's an argument that the gap is not significant because it (mostly) disappears when accounting for gender-specific choices, i.e. taking maternity leave and not returning, or not bidding for an ambitious raise. The common counter-argument is to say well, even if it down to choices it's an undesirable situation for society, that women are paid significantly less than men as a whole. Perhaps we can structure things so that men and women make more similar choices? The counter to the counter-argument is that such a thing is not possible (or should not even be attempted) because of gender differences that are innate and cannot be "fixed" by socialisation. This is where the murky science regarding gender-based differences in early life gets dragged into the argument.
- deleted 8y ago
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- 0815test 8y ago
  The argument that "the gap disappears when accounting for gender-specific choices" is made as an explanation of why the gap exists, which is entirely different to an argument that the gap is not significant. Such an argument would arguably be specious; the income gap is obviously still there and arguably it has negative social effects, so offsetting it via gender-dependent redistribution could well make sense.
  - n4r9 8y ago
    It depends who's making the argument! I've generally found people on HN to be sensitive to the nuance, but over on reddit - where the level of discourse is lower but perhaps more reflective of everyday conversation - things are very different. Some use the choice explanation to dismiss the finding as not problematic, or to push the blame onto women. Some recent examples after a quick search: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/aujkwr/_/eh9n9rj https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/aujkwr/_/eh9n9r... > The gender pay gap might not be a problem and it could just be the result of the choices of both men and women https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/ac8u6p/_/ed64p8d https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/ac8u6p/_/ed64p8... > The gender pay gap has been debunked, can we move on already https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/acc3tv/_/ed6tw7h https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/acc3tv/_/ed6tw7... > Do people still believe in the gender pay gap? Is is still being pushed as “women getting paid less because they are women”? https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/acgxxn/_/ed7vbj0 https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/acgxxn/_/ed7vbj... > It’s almost as stupid as the gender pay gap day
warent 8y ago
I think part of the controversy is also that there have recently been high-profile cases of scientists with an agenda and a hypothesis that they fundamentally believe, and then produce research for the purpose of trying to prove their hypothesis rather than keeping it neutral or attempting to disprove their hypothesis. But the problem goes both ways. There are also social justice warriors who choose to believe their intuition and feelings over cold logic. Basically, it's an emotionally charged topic that makes objective analysis difficult due to the complexity of humans and their motivations.
shredprez 8y ago
Biological cognitive differences (real or not) have traditionally been applied to exclude people from work, opportunities, and liberty that, in a free society, everyone should have the chance to access. I get the sense there is a fear that concrete evidence of biological cognitive differences will give cover to discrimination, and likely broader discrimination than the evidence really "supports."
- bendbro 8y ago
  > Biological cognitive differences (real or not) have traditionally been applied to exclude people from work, opportunities, and liberty that, in a free society, everyone should have the chance to access. Sources? I don’t believe anyone has been using science (biological cognitive differences?) to exclude individuals from jobs, beyond the perfectly acceptable “let’s not hire the stupid and incompetent when we can hire someone less stupid and less incompetent”
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    Go back a hundred years and the culture is full of this kind of stuff. Racial and sexual stereotypes were rampant, and people could commonly point to "science" to back up their biases. Surely you are aware of this?
    - pmarreck 8y ago
      So because "scarequote science" (as you are using it) was 1 flavor 100 years ago (an extremely flawed one), that means MODERN-DAY science is also suspect? If I cherry-pick 1 study out of 10 which corroborates my worldiew and use it to cudgel my oppressive point home, that is not a "science problem," the problem there is that someone must step up and point out that 9 other studies did not have results in agreement with that one person's worldview!
      - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
        > I don’t believe anyone has been using science (biological cognitive differences?) to exclude individuals from jobs That was what I was responding to. Yes, people have used science as an excuse to do those very things.
trophycase 8y ago
The strains of third wave feminism that seems to have become a part of the ideology of a large portion of the modern left seem to depend very strongly on the argument "Men and women are the same. Therefore sexism and bias is unjustifiable both morally and scientifically." It also fits very nicely into the "gender as a social construct" theory of intersectional feminism and LGBT ideologies. In some respects they are correct that gender is a social construct, and also that "biological sex" isn't as clear cut as it first appears when you begin to consider edge cases. However, when you begin to think about HRT for trans people, I think the waters start to get murkier for their particular ideology. I'm not sure if they've found a way to reconcile HRT with the "blank slate" argument, but I haven't heard it. So forgive me if there is one.
- DC-3 8y ago
  An analogy to reconcile gender identity and the blank slate hypothesis - if we analogize our brains at birth to brand new cars, each with the exact same components and performance figures, then gender is simply the color that our cars are painted. A trans person is therefore simply a person with a blue-car brain in the biological body more usually associated with a red-car brain (or vice-versa). Our brains are all functionally equivalent, and gender is simply an associated property of the brain with no effect on form or function. I don't personally agree with this line of reasoning (it fails to explain how people undergoing HRT often find themselves tending in personality to become more like the stereotype of their gender identity) but it does, in my view, hold water to an extent.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
> Can someone (likely younger than me) explain to me why the concept of gender-associated cognitive differences has become so controversial, and why the “blank slate hypothesis” is the only one considered acceptable? I speculate that the "blank state hypothesis" has a media footprint that's disproportionate to the number of people who actually believe it in its strongest form. Perhaps more media attention is given to people who argue for extreme nature-vs-nurture positions, rather than more moderate nature-and-nurture positions?
Izkata 8y ago
Two patterns I notice in the arguments (in general on many sites): * Interest has been conflated with ability. You can see this most prominently with the James Damore diversity memo, which was all about interest, but has been declared to be about ability by almost everyone lambasting him for it. * Misunderstanding "average" as "all", another common misrepresentation of Damore's diversity memo.
- cooooooffffeeee 8y ago
  You're doing yourself a disservice by mentioning Damore at all. His manifesto may have had some points, but was also rife with utter bullshit, false equivalence, value judgements, and personal biases. Damore has also since proven himself to be an utter chode in his unwavering insistence that he is 100% right. If you have an argument to make, you'll reach more people without mentioning that nonsense.
  - bendbro 8y ago
    The Wikipedia page on the topic does not reflect what you say. It shows criticism and support from multiple people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Chamber https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Ch...
    - cooooooffffeeee 8y ago
      Right but it's a such a lightning rod that it instantly derails any reasonable discussion. It's basically the Godwin's law of conversations about sex, gender, and political bias.
      - pmarreck 8y ago
        "this conversation is too miscommunicative to be had" ...is exactly the sort of conversation that needs to happen
        8y ago
acdha 8y ago
The problem comes from political views being dressed up as scientific. There's no question that there are biological differences caused by e.g. hormone levels but that hasn't been linked to high-level cognitive skills the same way, say, testosterone levels correlate with muscle development (this also raises the question of the degree of overlap between populations). This is especially complicated in humans because the brain is famously plastic and high-level cognitive skills represent years of practice so even if you did find, say, a difference in the size of a brain region you would still want to study whether that's innate or simply reflecting that people who do something a lot develop capacity for it. Similarly, most higher-level tasks combine multiple skills, often in different combinations, so it's really hard to try to go from a low-level measurement to explaining performance on something high level. The neuroscientists I used to support were very quick to acknowledge that innate effects were possible but that they hadn't been linked to anything high level and were in all likelihood weak because if there was a strong effect so many decades of studies looking for them would have found something.
- deogeo 8y ago
  Then isn't https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x also 'dressing up political views as scientific'? But that stirs far less controversy. At the very least, no-one ever got fired for claiming there are no differences.
  - acdha 8y ago
    > But that stirs far less controversy. There's a difference between claiming that there are no difference and critically examining specific claims to see how well supported they are by the scientific evidence. The book review you linked to appears to fall in that tradition of critically examining claims and looking at sources of systemic error. > At the very least, no-one ever got fired for claiming there are no differences. Nobody has been fired for relevant scientifically-supported claims, either. What has happened is that some guys have spouted off outside of their areas of competency and tried to avoid the consequences by handwaving something about engaging in science. Science is a tool for becoming less-wrong over time, not a get-out-of-jail-free card.
KirinDave 8y ago
The notion of cognitive differences isn't that controversial. What's controversial is making value judgements about their utility in critical social contexts. There isn't evidence of an "obviously superior" thought modality for most any given task or family of tasks you can name. What's more, it is a generally accepted fact among scientists that these values exist as distributions among the population (and even this paper demonstrates non-total values). Since we generally think that DNA and extensive physical scanning shouldn't be a prerequisite for social contexts, many of these differences aren't especially meaningful for something like a hiring committee.
openasocket 8y ago
The biggest issue is that, with such gender-related differences, it is virtually impossible to differentiate between what is biological in nature and what is the result of socialization. You're basically just limited to fetal development and infant behaviors, which you can't exactly extrapolate to career choices and adult cognitive function. Looking at modern-day gender ratios in careers and just hypothesizing a biological cause is specious reasoning. You need so much more evidence to make that claim.
- pmarreck 8y ago
  Identical twins raised separately have a 50% higher concordance of sexual orientation. Note: Not 100%, but also not 0%. This tells me that, at least in the case of sexual preference (and possibly, all other preferences, such as in learning how things work/STEM), it seems to be significantly (but not completely; but also not insignificantly) influenced by nonsocial/biological/"root" factors. This is of course, unfortunately, the most troublesome answer, because all it does is lead to even more questions.
  - openasocket 8y ago
    sexual preference is a pretty bad stand-in for career choices. But we don't have to use it, there are twin studies on career path: http://www.aei.org/publication/the-genetics-of-job-choice/ http://www.aei.org/publication/the-genetics-of-job-choice/ . The numbers vary a lot based on the specifics, but tend to be less than 50%. But this only provides evidence of a genetic component to career choice, not sexual differences. To prove that, you'd need to isolate the genes responsible and show they are on the X or Y chromosomes. Actually, genes are a lot more complicated than that, and there would likely be a large number of interactions between a lot of different genes. So instead you'd need to use some sort of statistical model. Also, I'd note that this doesn't rule out societal factors. Heritability scores are a measure of the interaction between genes and the environment. If we lived in a world where it was against the law for a woman to be a computer programmer, you'd see a very strong genetic component for career choice as well!
    - 8y ago
coldtea 8y ago
>Can someone (likely younger than me) explain to me why the concept of gender-associated cognitive differences has become so controversial, and why the “blank slate hypothesis” is the only one considered acceptable? For "social sciences" it's easy, they are mostly fashion. For harder sciences, well, with enough people pushing, they will promote whatever doesn't cost them grants. It's not like most of the studies are well done or reproducible anyway.
manfredo 8y ago
There's a strong tendency, in some environments, to view equality in terms of equality of outcome. E.g. women are not and will not be equal to men until they compromise 50% of engineers, 50% of CEOs, etc. Coupled to this is an assumption that any inequality of outcome is indicative of bias or discrimination, and thus positive discrimination is valid to rectify it. The notion of population level differences is not good for such people because it would men that disparities of outcome may exist without bias. It's extra uncomfortable for places that engage in discrimination to rectify disparities of outcome, because it fractures the justifications for these policies. E.g. if we accept that women might make up 20-25% of engineers without societal bias, the discriminatory policies to try and hire 50% women doesn't very fair any more.
alanfranz 8y ago
> gender-associated cognitive differences has become so controversial, and why the “blank slate hypothesis” is the only one considered acceptable? This was an entirely different story when I was in college. Because that kind of "science" was leveraged by many as a reason, with things like "you're a woman, hence..." or "you're a man, hence...", even though the variation within a sex is enough to explain many differences for individuals. It seems that pushing a simpler hypothesis is easier than explaining statistics to the world.
abathur 8y ago
This doesn't really answer your question, but I wanted to sketch out how I think about the blank slate (or something like it) since it seems like you're engaging sincerely with everyone here. 1. Since networks in general like to produce complex emergent behavior, and our understanding of brains and behavior and networks and emergence are still fairly limited, I deal with the uncertainty by looking for sane default positions (i.e., a position to hold in the absence of comprehensive evidence otherwise). I'm not sure if it's obvious from a distance, but in practice default positions are an exercise in intellectual humility. 2. I am working on a sort of razor. I don't know what to call it, yet. When it comes to animal-kingdom behavior, a good default position is to think of any observed behavior as being in the possibility space of the broader category until the evidence against this is overwhelming. If we see one crow use a tool, assume tool use is in the crow possibility space. If we see another corvid do it, assume it's part of the corvid possibility space. If we see some non-corvid avian do it, assume it's part of the avian possibility space. If we already know humans do it, assume this goes back at least to our last common ancestor with birds. If all of the nurses anyone has ever seen are female humans, it is fair to think of the occupation as part of the female human possibility space. If anyone has seen any non-female human nurse, it is prudent to think of the occupation as part of the human possibility space. If anyone has seen a canine nurse, it is prudent to think of nursing as part of the mammalian or animal possibility spaces. Once you know a behavior is in the possibility space, another good default position is: assume everything known to influence any other behavior in that possibility space is involved, until the evidence against is overwhelming. Why do humans choose to become a nurse or not? Assume family, society, friends, money, justice, punishment, education, teachers/mentors, status, media, profound experiences, mate-seeking, curiosity/interest, talent, chasing neurochemicals, instinct, charity, hormones, tradition, biology/neurology, etc. play a role. While it's certainly possible that the male/female nursing delta is caused by genetic sexually-dimorphic destiny, the default position suggests it isn't prudent to give this any more weight than the other possibilities until some can be ruled out or sexual dimorphism is resoundingly demonstrated to be the primary causal factor. 3. As the evidence for human neuroplasticity continues to accumulate, it seems at least plausible that our brains are significantly more plastic than we currently realize. Likewise, as the evidence for complex behavior like tool use and learning in non-human species accumulates (including fish, reptiles, and insects), it seems at least plausible that reasoning, problem-solving, plasticity, and flexibility are vastly older (and more basic/common) than we thought. Given these, it seems like a decent default position to assume that complex/unique behavior is more likely (but not necessarily) plastic/flexible than hard-wired.

gotocake 8y ago

There are two main reasons I’m aware of. First, a certain kind of person tries to make a deeply sexist argument and reaches for “science” to back it up. The overall experience with that kind of thing is profoundly negative, and it has a pretty grim history, so there are strong reactions to it. It’s true that well-intentioned people do ask uncomfortable questions, but especially online they’re dwarfed by trolls and people arguing in bad faith. All told this isn’t an insurmountable problem, and more and better research can help to shine some light on the issue. It’s also not impossible to determine whether or not someone is pushing a predetermined agenda and using a given study (while ignoring others) as a bludgeon. The second, radioactive topic centers around trans people. I’m not going to touch that topic with a 10 foot pole, because online the discussion rarely develops more nuance than mysticism dressed up as science on one side, and bigotry dressed up as “common sense” arguments on the other. All told it makes for a difficult topic to discuss in good faith, absent agendas on or offline, but online it’s pure poison.

thisone 8y ago
Arguments also tend to start (unstatedly) from the baseline that "male is the default and most valuable" which will get backs up.
- fromthestart 8y ago
  >Arguments also tend to start (unstatedly) from the baseline that "male is the default and most valuable" Given that these assertions are unstated, they sound more like a manifestation of insecurity on the part of the listener. Conversely, one could speculate that responses to questions of equality are frequently taken personally and met defensively, with resulting rationalizations, like the one you listed, of improper emotional reasoning. This is only a controversial subject because people feel that there are potential negative implications to them as individuals, even though the rammifications are purely for distributions, which laymen tend not to understand, hence the personal responses.
- pmarreck 8y ago
  "Unstated" things are not evidence. That's the Conspiracy Fallacy. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/74/Conspiracy-Theory https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla... "Look at all these people not talking about how racist they are! Clearly they're all hiding something."
malvosenior 8y ago
> It’s true that well-intentioned people do ask uncomfortable questions, but especially online they’re dwarfed by trolls and people arguing in bad faith. Why is it trolling or arguing "in bad faith" to think that there are inherent differences in gender? The vast majority of people alive today believe this. People who attempt to back up their intuitive knowledge with science seem to be the opposite of trolls. It gets tiresome to have entire swaths of mainstream opinion labeled as "bad faith" (which ironically is bad faith).
- gotocake 8y ago
  You’ve quoted a single sentence out of two paragraphs, and then extrapolated from that fragment something I didn’t actually say. Even putting it in as neutral and fair terms as I could, I should have guessed that anything on this topic would strongly resemble a Rorschach test to some. Please understand that since the thrust of my point was the futility of discussing this online, I’m leaving my response at this.
- mduncs 8y ago
  > People who attempt to back up their intuitive knowledge with science seem to be the opposite of trolls. Consider the difference between seeing if your intuitions reflect science, and trying to justify your intuitions with science. If you go looking for information that matches parts of your internal biases, can you reasonably say you would change your mind if you found information that conflicted your view? What if ten articles out of twenty reflected your view? What if one article out of twenty reflected your view? I think you should reread the portion of their comment about using science as a cudgel to see why it can be bad to consider intuition the guiding principle of research.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    I think part of healthy debate (and its true value) is that the person with opposing views would also present science and data to back up their argument. Instead what we get is an instant fall back to "trolls, arguing in bad faith...". If you have data or research that backs up your position, you definitely should post it and compare it to any other data that comes from the opposing view. And yes, I would change my mind if I was presented with credible evidence.
mancerayder 8y ago
Granted, but should 'purpose' of a scientific research project or conclusion, you know, matter? If the science is bad, it won't get published or it will get published and destroyed. Why should politics get in the way of our accumulation of data? Get the data first, worry about interpretations after that. The moral question should not block / impede the inquiry of a topic and quest for more data. Perhaps, with the possible exception of some superweapon or bio weapon research? Didn't we learn anything at all from the grim history of religious authorities impeding scientific inquiry because the conclusions were uncomfortable? What exactly is going on in the last 5 or so years that we've decided to spurn Reason?
- gotocake 8y ago
  You seem to have read something in my post that wasn’t there, namely that I was suggesting some kind of restriction on research, rather than what I did say, which was the need for more research. I can only guess how you interpreted my post in such a way.
  - pmarreck 8y ago
    > I can only guess how you interpreted my post in such a way. Hey, man. Insinuation/assumption. This is exactly the sort of remark that quickly toxifies the discussion. Keep it rational.
    - gotocake 8y ago
      That wasn’t my intention, I just meant that I didn’t understand the reasoning, not to infer something sinister.
      - pmarreck 8y ago
        Ah. I've seen wording like that from people trying to insinuate that the person has a racist/sexist worldview that they're either covering up or trying to intellectually rationalize. Or as a subtle dig on their intelligence. :)
- 8y ago
stcredzero 8y ago
It’s true that well-intentioned people do ask uncomfortable questions, but especially online they’re dwarfed by trolls and people arguing in bad faith. Then isn't it incumbent on people to carefully consider what's being said and not knee-jerk react? As far as I can tell, all of the knee-jerk reactions in either direction simply add to the noise and outrage. All told it makes for a difficult topic to discuss in good faith, absent agendas on or offline, but online it’s pure poison. It makes a lot more sense to think of the whole situation as an exercise in the generation of outrage and toxicity in the service of attention and virality. Given that outrage is the easiest way to achieve virality, it doesn't take some sort of underlying conspiracy to explain this. We've created a sociopolitical milieu combined with networks which create these perverse incentives. The same combination amplifies the most toxic and nonsensical voices, and acts to disguise intelligent voices as nonsense. The solution is for intelligent and reasonable voices to fight back against the nonsense. This means 1) calling out the excesses of one's own side and 2) uniting with voices of reason across the aisle. The opponent who values truth and with whom one can reasonably disagree with is much preferable to the sociopath no one can reason with because they are really motivated by power stemming from outrage.
fwip 8y ago
It seems like the research shows that, pre-transition, a trans person's brain resembles that of the "target" sex more closely than their assigned sex. From what I understand, this effect is more pronounced in trans men than trans women.
- pmarreck 8y ago
  You're presupposing sex-based brain differences, which is also taboo.
coldtea 8y ago
>There are two main reasons I’m aware of. First, a certain kind of person tries to make a deeply sexist argument and reaches for “science” to back it up. The overall experience with that kind of thing is profoundly negative, and it has a pretty grim history, so there are strong reactions to it. Whatever certain kind of non-scientific persons do politically should have zero effect on scientific output. If X is a scientific fact, scientists are not OK to say that it doesn't hold, even if people regularly abuse X.
pmarreck 8y ago
> First, a certain kind of person tries to make a deeply sexist argument and reaches for “science” to back it up. Disclaimer: I've debated racists on Twitter, with moderate success. I started by presuming that their correlational data wasn't invalid. Then I showed them this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence while stating that I couldn't waste time talking to any of them unless they were over 6' (for men) or 5'8" (for women) because going too far below that would be beneath my eminent intelligence as a person who towers at 6'3". They magically shut up soon after this. You see, there's a difference between seeing a correlation, and acting on it. Racists want to act on correlations (oppressing nonwhites), but oddly, they wouldn't think the same about oppressing short people, even though that evidence is at least as plain-as-day. This is all besides the fact that correlational data is weak to begin with.

ajhurliman 8y ago

Paul Graham had an essay[0] from 2004 that made the claim that taboos are created by semi-powerful groups to control situations. Taboo things aren't obviously wrong (like saying I'm 10' tall, it's not offensive, it's just incorrect); they might have some truth to them and they endanger a certain group's position. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

VanPossum 8y ago
Case in point about "a certain group's position", it seems that the underlying stance of "the gendered brain doesnt exist" is: difference equals inferiority. Which of course is both absurd and reactionary. Saying that there is no difference and gender/behaviour is 100% the result of social pressure basicly means that for example gays are also conditioned, so this "theory" actually agrees with nutcase things like gay conversion therapy.
- pmarreck 8y ago
  > Saying that there is no difference and gender/behaviour is 100% the result of social pressure basicly means that for example gays are also conditioned, so this "theory" actually agrees with nutcase things like gay conversion therapy. oh wow. this is a great point.

n4r9 8y ago

One possibility is how it relates to the debate around the gender earnings/wage gap. There's an argument that the gap is not significant because it (mostly) disappears when accounting for gender-specific choices, i.e. taking maternity leave and not returning, or not bidding for an ambitious raise. The common counter-argument is to say well, even if it down to choices it's an undesirable situation for society, that women are paid significantly less than men as a whole. Perhaps we can structure things so that men and women make more similar choices? The counter to the counter-argument is that such a thing is not possible (or should not even be attempted) because of gender differences that are innate and cannot be "fixed" by socialisation. This is where the murky science regarding gender-based differences in early life gets dragged into the argument.

deleted 8y ago
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0815test 8y ago
The argument that "the gap disappears when accounting for gender-specific choices" is made as an explanation of why the gap exists, which is entirely different to an argument that the gap is not significant. Such an argument would arguably be specious; the income gap is obviously still there and arguably it has negative social effects, so offsetting it via gender-dependent redistribution could well make sense.
- n4r9 8y ago
  It depends who's making the argument! I've generally found people on HN to be sensitive to the nuance, but over on reddit - where the level of discourse is lower but perhaps more reflective of everyday conversation - things are very different. Some use the choice explanation to dismiss the finding as not problematic, or to push the blame onto women. Some recent examples after a quick search: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/aujkwr/_/eh9n9rj https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/aujkwr/_/eh9n9r... > The gender pay gap might not be a problem and it could just be the result of the choices of both men and women https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/ac8u6p/_/ed64p8d https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/ac8u6p/_/ed64p8... > The gender pay gap has been debunked, can we move on already https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/acc3tv/_/ed6tw7h https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/acc3tv/_/ed6tw7... > Do people still believe in the gender pay gap? Is is still being pushed as “women getting paid less because they are women”? https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/acgxxn/_/ed7vbj0 https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/acgxxn/_/ed7vbj... > It’s almost as stupid as the gender pay gap day

warent 8y ago

I think part of the controversy is also that there have recently been high-profile cases of scientists with an agenda and a hypothesis that they fundamentally believe, and then produce research for the purpose of trying to prove their hypothesis rather than keeping it neutral or attempting to disprove their hypothesis. But the problem goes both ways. There are also social justice warriors who choose to believe their intuition and feelings over cold logic. Basically, it's an emotionally charged topic that makes objective analysis difficult due to the complexity of humans and their motivations.

shredprez 8y ago

Biological cognitive differences (real or not) have traditionally been applied to exclude people from work, opportunities, and liberty that, in a free society, everyone should have the chance to access. I get the sense there is a fear that concrete evidence of biological cognitive differences will give cover to discrimination, and likely broader discrimination than the evidence really "supports."

bendbro 8y ago
> Biological cognitive differences (real or not) have traditionally been applied to exclude people from work, opportunities, and liberty that, in a free society, everyone should have the chance to access. Sources? I don’t believe anyone has been using science (biological cognitive differences?) to exclude individuals from jobs, beyond the perfectly acceptable “let’s not hire the stupid and incompetent when we can hire someone less stupid and less incompetent”
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  Go back a hundred years and the culture is full of this kind of stuff. Racial and sexual stereotypes were rampant, and people could commonly point to "science" to back up their biases. Surely you are aware of this?
  - pmarreck 8y ago
    So because "scarequote science" (as you are using it) was 1 flavor 100 years ago (an extremely flawed one), that means MODERN-DAY science is also suspect? If I cherry-pick 1 study out of 10 which corroborates my worldiew and use it to cudgel my oppressive point home, that is not a "science problem," the problem there is that someone must step up and point out that 9 other studies did not have results in agreement with that one person's worldview!
    - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
      > I don’t believe anyone has been using science (biological cognitive differences?) to exclude individuals from jobs That was what I was responding to. Yes, people have used science as an excuse to do those very things.

trophycase 8y ago

The strains of third wave feminism that seems to have become a part of the ideology of a large portion of the modern left seem to depend very strongly on the argument "Men and women are the same. Therefore sexism and bias is unjustifiable both morally and scientifically." It also fits very nicely into the "gender as a social construct" theory of intersectional feminism and LGBT ideologies. In some respects they are correct that gender is a social construct, and also that "biological sex" isn't as clear cut as it first appears when you begin to consider edge cases. However, when you begin to think about HRT for trans people, I think the waters start to get murkier for their particular ideology. I'm not sure if they've found a way to reconcile HRT with the "blank slate" argument, but I haven't heard it. So forgive me if there is one.

DC-3 8y ago
An analogy to reconcile gender identity and the blank slate hypothesis - if we analogize our brains at birth to brand new cars, each with the exact same components and performance figures, then gender is simply the color that our cars are painted. A trans person is therefore simply a person with a blue-car brain in the biological body more usually associated with a red-car brain (or vice-versa). Our brains are all functionally equivalent, and gender is simply an associated property of the brain with no effect on form or function. I don't personally agree with this line of reasoning (it fails to explain how people undergoing HRT often find themselves tending in personality to become more like the stereotype of their gender identity) but it does, in my view, hold water to an extent.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago

> Can someone (likely younger than me) explain to me why the concept of gender-associated cognitive differences has become so controversial, and why the “blank slate hypothesis” is the only one considered acceptable? I speculate that the "blank state hypothesis" has a media footprint that's disproportionate to the number of people who actually believe it in its strongest form. Perhaps more media attention is given to people who argue for extreme nature-vs-nurture positions, rather than more moderate nature-and-nurture positions?

Izkata 8y ago

Two patterns I notice in the arguments (in general on many sites): * Interest has been conflated with ability. You can see this most prominently with the James Damore diversity memo, which was all about interest, but has been declared to be about ability by almost everyone lambasting him for it. * Misunderstanding "average" as "all", another common misrepresentation of Damore's diversity memo.

cooooooffffeeee 8y ago
You're doing yourself a disservice by mentioning Damore at all. His manifesto may have had some points, but was also rife with utter bullshit, false equivalence, value judgements, and personal biases. Damore has also since proven himself to be an utter chode in his unwavering insistence that he is 100% right. If you have an argument to make, you'll reach more people without mentioning that nonsense.
- bendbro 8y ago
  The Wikipedia page on the topic does not reflect what you say. It shows criticism and support from multiple people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Chamber https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Ch...
  - cooooooffffeeee 8y ago
    Right but it's a such a lightning rod that it instantly derails any reasonable discussion. It's basically the Godwin's law of conversations about sex, gender, and political bias.
    - pmarreck 8y ago
      "this conversation is too miscommunicative to be had" ...is exactly the sort of conversation that needs to happen
      - 8y ago

acdha 8y ago

The problem comes from political views being dressed up as scientific. There's no question that there are biological differences caused by e.g. hormone levels but that hasn't been linked to high-level cognitive skills the same way, say, testosterone levels correlate with muscle development (this also raises the question of the degree of overlap between populations). This is especially complicated in humans because the brain is famously plastic and high-level cognitive skills represent years of practice so even if you did find, say, a difference in the size of a brain region you would still want to study whether that's innate or simply reflecting that people who do something a lot develop capacity for it. Similarly, most higher-level tasks combine multiple skills, often in different combinations, so it's really hard to try to go from a low-level measurement to explaining performance on something high level. The neuroscientists I used to support were very quick to acknowledge that innate effects were possible but that they hadn't been linked to anything high level and were in all likelihood weak because if there was a strong effect so many decades of studies looking for them would have found something.

deogeo 8y ago
Then isn't https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x also 'dressing up political views as scientific'? But that stirs far less controversy. At the very least, no-one ever got fired for claiming there are no differences.
- acdha 8y ago
  > But that stirs far less controversy. There's a difference between claiming that there are no difference and critically examining specific claims to see how well supported they are by the scientific evidence. The book review you linked to appears to fall in that tradition of critically examining claims and looking at sources of systemic error. > At the very least, no-one ever got fired for claiming there are no differences. Nobody has been fired for relevant scientifically-supported claims, either. What has happened is that some guys have spouted off outside of their areas of competency and tried to avoid the consequences by handwaving something about engaging in science. Science is a tool for becoming less-wrong over time, not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

KirinDave 8y ago

The notion of cognitive differences isn't that controversial. What's controversial is making value judgements about their utility in critical social contexts. There isn't evidence of an "obviously superior" thought modality for most any given task or family of tasks you can name. What's more, it is a generally accepted fact among scientists that these values exist as distributions among the population (and even this paper demonstrates non-total values). Since we generally think that DNA and extensive physical scanning shouldn't be a prerequisite for social contexts, many of these differences aren't especially meaningful for something like a hiring committee.

openasocket 8y ago

The biggest issue is that, with such gender-related differences, it is virtually impossible to differentiate between what is biological in nature and what is the result of socialization. You're basically just limited to fetal development and infant behaviors, which you can't exactly extrapolate to career choices and adult cognitive function. Looking at modern-day gender ratios in careers and just hypothesizing a biological cause is specious reasoning. You need so much more evidence to make that claim.

pmarreck 8y ago
Identical twins raised separately have a 50% higher concordance of sexual orientation. Note: Not 100%, but also not 0%. This tells me that, at least in the case of sexual preference (and possibly, all other preferences, such as in learning how things work/STEM), it seems to be significantly (but not completely; but also not insignificantly) influenced by nonsocial/biological/"root" factors. This is of course, unfortunately, the most troublesome answer, because all it does is lead to even more questions.
- openasocket 8y ago
  sexual preference is a pretty bad stand-in for career choices. But we don't have to use it, there are twin studies on career path: http://www.aei.org/publication/the-genetics-of-job-choice/ http://www.aei.org/publication/the-genetics-of-job-choice/ . The numbers vary a lot based on the specifics, but tend to be less than 50%. But this only provides evidence of a genetic component to career choice, not sexual differences. To prove that, you'd need to isolate the genes responsible and show they are on the X or Y chromosomes. Actually, genes are a lot more complicated than that, and there would likely be a large number of interactions between a lot of different genes. So instead you'd need to use some sort of statistical model. Also, I'd note that this doesn't rule out societal factors. Heritability scores are a measure of the interaction between genes and the environment. If we lived in a world where it was against the law for a woman to be a computer programmer, you'd see a very strong genetic component for career choice as well!
  - 8y ago

coldtea 8y ago

>Can someone (likely younger than me) explain to me why the concept of gender-associated cognitive differences has become so controversial, and why the “blank slate hypothesis” is the only one considered acceptable? For "social sciences" it's easy, they are mostly fashion. For harder sciences, well, with enough people pushing, they will promote whatever doesn't cost them grants. It's not like most of the studies are well done or reproducible anyway.

manfredo 8y ago

There's a strong tendency, in some environments, to view equality in terms of equality of outcome. E.g. women are not and will not be equal to men until they compromise 50% of engineers, 50% of CEOs, etc. Coupled to this is an assumption that any inequality of outcome is indicative of bias or discrimination, and thus positive discrimination is valid to rectify it. The notion of population level differences is not good for such people because it would men that disparities of outcome may exist without bias. It's extra uncomfortable for places that engage in discrimination to rectify disparities of outcome, because it fractures the justifications for these policies. E.g. if we accept that women might make up 20-25% of engineers without societal bias, the discriminatory policies to try and hire 50% women doesn't very fair any more.

alanfranz 8y ago

> gender-associated cognitive differences has become so controversial, and why the “blank slate hypothesis” is the only one considered acceptable? This was an entirely different story when I was in college. Because that kind of "science" was leveraged by many as a reason, with things like "you're a woman, hence..." or "you're a man, hence...", even though the variation within a sex is enough to explain many differences for individuals. It seems that pushing a simpler hypothesis is easier than explaining statistics to the world.

abathur 8y ago

This doesn't really answer your question, but I wanted to sketch out how I think about the blank slate (or something like it) since it seems like you're engaging sincerely with everyone here. 1. Since networks in general like to produce complex emergent behavior, and our understanding of brains and behavior and networks and emergence are still fairly limited, I deal with the uncertainty by looking for sane default positions (i.e., a position to hold in the absence of comprehensive evidence otherwise). I'm not sure if it's obvious from a distance, but in practice default positions are an exercise in intellectual humility. 2. I am working on a sort of razor. I don't know what to call it, yet. When it comes to animal-kingdom behavior, a good default position is to think of any observed behavior as being in the possibility space of the broader category until the evidence against this is overwhelming. If we see one crow use a tool, assume tool use is in the crow possibility space. If we see another corvid do it, assume it's part of the corvid possibility space. If we see some non-corvid avian do it, assume it's part of the avian possibility space. If we already know humans do it, assume this goes back at least to our last common ancestor with birds. If all of the nurses anyone has ever seen are female humans, it is fair to think of the occupation as part of the female human possibility space. If anyone has seen any non-female human nurse, it is prudent to think of the occupation as part of the human possibility space. If anyone has seen a canine nurse, it is prudent to think of nursing as part of the mammalian or animal possibility spaces. Once you know a behavior is in the possibility space, another good default position is: assume everything known to influence any other behavior in that possibility space is involved, until the evidence against is overwhelming. Why do humans choose to become a nurse or not? Assume family, society, friends, money, justice, punishment, education, teachers/mentors, status, media, profound experiences, mate-seeking, curiosity/interest, talent, chasing neurochemicals, instinct, charity, hormones, tradition, biology/neurology, etc. play a role. While it's certainly possible that the male/female nursing delta is caused by genetic sexually-dimorphic destiny, the default position suggests it isn't prudent to give this any more weight than the other possibilities until some can be ruled out or sexual dimorphism is resoundingly demonstrated to be the primary causal factor. 3. As the evidence for human neuroplasticity continues to accumulate, it seems at least plausible that our brains are significantly more plastic than we currently realize. Likewise, as the evidence for complex behavior like tool use and learning in non-human species accumulates (including fish, reptiles, and insects), it seems at least plausible that reasoning, problem-solving, plasticity, and flexibility are vastly older (and more basic/common) than we thought. Given these, it seems like a decent default position to assume that complex/unique behavior is more likely (but not necessarily) plastic/flexible than hard-wired.