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Of course, it's not politically correct to say that there are more guy geniuses than girl geniuses, no matter how convincing the data may be. Saying that there

by csense 14y ago

Of course, it's not politically correct to say that there are more guy geniuses than girl geniuses, no matter how convincing the data may be. Saying that there are more male idiots is presumably perfectly okay; people who care about such things generally only care if it's the "minority" (never mind that women are a numerical majority in the US [1]). Caveats: I don't know how convincing the data is. My point is that the discussion would not change even if the science happened to be completely airtight. Anecdotally, many of the intelligent people I've met over the years have happened to be women, so I'm inclined to believe in equality or even a female-favorable situation for the high tail (but how this is affected by socialization and cultural expectations is a topic for another post). [1] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

btilly 14y ago
You are right. The evidence on that correlation is actually very strong. However in our society there is an effect that goes a long way to hide it. For a number of reasons (including earlier puberty), women have a significant academic advantage in high school. This means that about 60% of people heading to college are women. So if you're in an environment with lots of young college educated young people, all will be reasonably smart (they had to be to get into college), and you have on average about half-again as many women as men. If you just take this population and look for the top quartile, women are still over-represented relative to men. What about the smart men that I said existed, where are they? They are everywhere. It turns out that if your IQ is in the top 2%, you have worse odds of finishing high school than if your IQ is median. Lots of smart people make it nowhere near college for various combinations of reasons. If you mostly hang out with college graduates, you might never notice that, for instance, there are some really smart car mechanics out there.

by csense 14y ago

btilly 14y ago

You are right. The evidence on that correlation is actually very strong. However in our society there is an effect that goes a long way to hide it. For a number of reasons (including earlier puberty), women have a significant academic advantage in high school. This means that about 60% of people heading to college are women. So if you're in an environment with lots of young college educated young people, all will be reasonably smart (they had to be to get into college), and you have on average about half-again as many women as men. If you just take this population and look for the top quartile, women are still over-represented relative to men. What about the smart men that I said existed, where are they? They are everywhere. It turns out that if your IQ is in the top 2%, you have worse odds of finishing high school than if your IQ is median. Lots of smart people make it nowhere near college for various combinations of reasons. If you mostly hang out with college graduates, you might never notice that, for instance, there are some really smart car mechanics out there.