4 ms·

Please don't use JP as a reliable source. He is extremely subjective and pushes many ideologies in his "non fiction" takes.

lostjohnny 7y ago
I know little about him personally, and I shouldn't have quoted the last bit, because it wasn't related to what we're talking here. The point is sex differences exist and are framed in a way that culture or nature have really no meaning anymore. They are both hard to change and even if we change them in a meaningful way, we can't be sure it will fix what we think needs fixing. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153857 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... > yet also ensure that girls and women will not avoid mathematics more than boys and men due to mathematics anxiety. Policies must take into consideration that sex differences in career choices are not a simple function of gender equality and equal opportunities; and that, paradoxically, other factors (e.g., sex differences in occupational interests [74–76] and sex differences in other skills [9, 81, 82]) emerge in highly developed, gender-equal countries that might disproportionately affect girls’ mathematics anxiety and participation in STEM. It doesn't mean of course that one sex is intrinsically better than the other, but the fact that we as individuals have not really existed for thousands of years and our choices in life have always been a cat and mouse game between rules of society and biological instincts, makes the distinction harder to make. Our DNA tells us what we are biologically, but that's only the bootstrap process, what we become is mostly about the experiences we live and even in the flattest possible ideal society, where every choice is possible, we will all live different experiences and become different individuals. And we would not see a perfect random distribution of choices, but very clear patterns or clusters, much more clear than they are now. EDIT: sorry for being verbose. Another example I can make is universal welfare state in Italy. It was supposed to help families raise kids with less effort than the previous generations. The unwanted (I hope) effect has been that it shaped a society of full time men workers and part-time or no-working women. Because one way or another kids needed to be with their moms more than with their dads, we're talking about 60s in Italy here and a salary or a salary and half were enough. More money meant bigger dreams, moving to the city, in shiny new houses, but away from families that had been the buffer that allowed women to go to work while grandparents took care of kids. It meant hiring a nanny, but why hire a nanny that costed as much as the woman's salary, when she could stay home, save on money and raise the kids? This way men monopolized the higher paid jobs and women dominated education and services, because it was more flexible on hours. It was good nonetheless, my parents couldn't have raised two kids without the free nursery school that the public hospital offered to their employees (having to kids when you work 12 hours night shifts is not really possible without help), but that's how a system created to support natality and to make it possible for women to go to work, have become the disaster of inequalities that it is now.
agsilvio 7y ago
I don't see it that way.
Hitton 7y ago
He is professor of psychology who taught in top universities, his scientific articles have many citations, why wouldn't he be reliable? As far as I'm concerned he is as reliable as whole field of psychology - there can be multiple competitive theories, but you can't reject his just because you happen to not like them.
- dekhn 7y ago
  As a counterpoint, consider Peter Duesberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg), a world expert on viruses, who denies that the virus HIV causes AIDS. The reason we can reject this claim is that (unlike his previous work) it's totally unsupported by any evidence, counter to high quality evidence from large numbers of mainstream science.
  - defertoreptar 7y ago
    The way to make a counterpoint is not to bring up someone else and say "this other guy's claim is unsupported by evidence." Instead, you'd do this by showing how Peterson's claim is unsupported by evidence, specifically on how his view pertains to the current topic.
    - dekhn 7y ago
      My counterpoint is apt; it points out that even people who have credentials can be wrong, and it's important to consider that.
      - defertoreptar 7y ago
        Hitton's point is that "you can't reject [Peterson] just because you happen to not like them." If it was instead "because his claims are unsupported by evidence," then I could see how your counterpoint is apt. However, that is not the case.
        dekhn 7y ago

lostjohnny 7y ago

I know little about him personally, and I shouldn't have quoted the last bit, because it wasn't related to what we're talking here. The point is sex differences exist and are framed in a way that culture or nature have really no meaning anymore. They are both hard to change and even if we change them in a meaningful way, we can't be sure it will fix what we think needs fixing. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153857 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... > yet also ensure that girls and women will not avoid mathematics more than boys and men due to mathematics anxiety. Policies must take into consideration that sex differences in career choices are not a simple function of gender equality and equal opportunities; and that, paradoxically, other factors (e.g., sex differences in occupational interests [74–76] and sex differences in other skills [9, 81, 82]) emerge in highly developed, gender-equal countries that might disproportionately affect girls’ mathematics anxiety and participation in STEM. It doesn't mean of course that one sex is intrinsically better than the other, but the fact that we as individuals have not really existed for thousands of years and our choices in life have always been a cat and mouse game between rules of society and biological instincts, makes the distinction harder to make. Our DNA tells us what we are biologically, but that's only the bootstrap process, what we become is mostly about the experiences we live and even in the flattest possible ideal society, where every choice is possible, we will all live different experiences and become different individuals. And we would not see a perfect random distribution of choices, but very clear patterns or clusters, much more clear than they are now. EDIT: sorry for being verbose. Another example I can make is universal welfare state in Italy. It was supposed to help families raise kids with less effort than the previous generations. The unwanted (I hope) effect has been that it shaped a society of full time men workers and part-time or no-working women. Because one way or another kids needed to be with their moms more than with their dads, we're talking about 60s in Italy here and a salary or a salary and half were enough. More money meant bigger dreams, moving to the city, in shiny new houses, but away from families that had been the buffer that allowed women to go to work while grandparents took care of kids. It meant hiring a nanny, but why hire a nanny that costed as much as the woman's salary, when she could stay home, save on money and raise the kids? This way men monopolized the higher paid jobs and women dominated education and services, because it was more flexible on hours. It was good nonetheless, my parents couldn't have raised two kids without the free nursery school that the public hospital offered to their employees (having to kids when you work 12 hours night shifts is not really possible without help), but that's how a system created to support natality and to make it possible for women to go to work, have become the disaster of inequalities that it is now.

agsilvio 7y ago

I don't see it that way.

Hitton 7y ago

He is professor of psychology who taught in top universities, his scientific articles have many citations, why wouldn't he be reliable? As far as I'm concerned he is as reliable as whole field of psychology - there can be multiple competitive theories, but you can't reject his just because you happen to not like them.

dekhn 7y ago
As a counterpoint, consider Peter Duesberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg), a world expert on viruses, who denies that the virus HIV causes AIDS. The reason we can reject this claim is that (unlike his previous work) it's totally unsupported by any evidence, counter to high quality evidence from large numbers of mainstream science.
- defertoreptar 7y ago
  The way to make a counterpoint is not to bring up someone else and say "this other guy's claim is unsupported by evidence." Instead, you'd do this by showing how Peterson's claim is unsupported by evidence, specifically on how his view pertains to the current topic.
  - dekhn 7y ago
    My counterpoint is apt; it points out that even people who have credentials can be wrong, and it's important to consider that.
    - defertoreptar 7y ago
      Hitton's point is that "you can't reject [Peterson] just because you happen to not like them." If it was instead "because his claims are unsupported by evidence," then I could see how your counterpoint is apt. However, that is not the case.
      - dekhn 7y ago