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It advocates Nature, and supports it based on anecdotal evidence involving people who'd had over 5 years of exposure to Nurture, and the assumption that since t

It advocates Nature, and supports it based on anecdotal evidence involving people who'd had over 5 years of exposure to Nurture, and the assumption that since they are young it must be Nature at work.

tokenadult 18y ago
I agree that it would take a much more rigorous look at what social influences boys and girls encounter to show that genes rather than environment drive male-female differences. Most children are probably quite responsive to what they are expected to do, even if those expectations are never verbalized. That would be expected from the evolutionary history of children learning most of what it takes to be human from social groups. What did you think of the blog author's comments on the suitability of school for boys and for girls, as we find them today?
- ellyagg 18y ago
  There is absolutely scads of research showing that boys and girls are different from day 1. Boy and girl infants react differently to the same stimuli in controlled experiments. I'm not doing your research for you, though; look it up.
  - xenophanes 18y ago
    I've read some such research. Never found any that was valid, though. Do you have one cite that you're especially confident is correct? Bear in mind that "genetically react differently to some stimuli" is not the same thing as "genetically has a gender role". The study would need to bridge that gap or it can't validly offer any conclusion about gender roles.
    - jibiki 18y ago
      Here's one I found on google: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4K-4BVNR3H-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=acc918c6c815d0bd29232d2fcbdc9026 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi... I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Obviously there are genetic differences between men and women. It seems like you're saying these differences are purely physical, but that's a meaningless statement to those of us who don't believe in dualism.
    - tungstenfurnace 18y ago
      Hi Xenophanes. I would like to remind you of my theory, which stems from the fact that boys and girls are born with slightly different brains (due to genetics). You will say that that doesn't matter: brains are universal computers. Well, yes. However they are also a key part of the environment of the developing mind. Our environments influence what choices we make (by controlling the options and their relative costs, not by making the choices). For example, if I am born near the sea then I am more likely to learn to swim before my cousin, who lives far from the sea. He lives in the mountains, and thus he is more likely to learn to climb first. In the same way, boys and girls may have different susceptibilities to various memes, because their brain environments have differentially influenced their choices. Under this model, average male and female behaviour will eventually converge. How? Because, assuming one progresses and lives long enough, parochial theories are replaced by universal ones. And one's biological sex and the memes I referred to are parochial factors.
jerf 18y ago
Do you have any children? I've got an eight-month old boy. I can't claim to be the world's expert and I won't pretend this isn't an anecdote, but still, it's a data point. I'm also 30. If you are 16 and you think you know what raising a baby is about, you're probably wrong, but if you make it to 30 without having some sort of good idea, you're... well, I won't call you an idiot but you've not been paying attention. So I had a good idea about how helpless babies are and a pretty good idea of how they got their needs met. I've not been surprised by the midnight feedings or anything else like that. But I will admit to some surprise at just how mind-bogglingly stupid babies are. My son is toying with the idea of beginning "separation anxiety", which psychologists think is not merely "a phase", but the point at which the baby begins to distinguish between himself and his parents. Think about what that means for a moment. We're talking about an entity too stupid to realize that other people are not himself. This is a level of stupidity we can only comprehend symbolically; we can not really grasp this degree of stupidity. My son is too stupid to realize that he is not me. He is way to stupid to pick up on subtle social messages about what it means to "be a man", were I even trying to give any. There is simply no way that Nature is not the dominant force here; there's simply nowhere for Nuture to be living! And yet... he is a boy. He likes to be loud, and I don't mean "cry", I mean be loud when he's happy. He likes to move and squirm. He likes cars and construction equipment, spurns the dolls of other babies (when he loves their other new things), and really loves my laptop, which means there's a lot of fun to be had keeping him away from that in my future. (As in, "I don't want him to destroy it"; we're years away from any actual use of a computer.) He likes to move around, and he likes to smack his toys to make them do things. I've also seen several other girls of this age cohort now, and even the ones that are high-strung and nervous when it comes to crying play radically more calmly, have clearly different preferences for toys, and so on. What social signals can we possibly be sending a four-month old baby to tell them how their gender behaves? Screw "not understanding gender", a four-month old doesn't understand that things persist when they move out of their vision! How is a being that was only recently introduced to "color" (not that they can articulate it) picking up on these social cues? How can something so stupid that he doesn't respond to his own name suddenly get so socially smart that he realizes that the doll I just placed in his hand is a parent-being-funny trap, and he's supposed to drop it and pick the truck up again? (Which is what he did.) Maybe a five-year old has picked up on it by then, but what accounts for the gender differences between 5-month-olds? Until you have a baby, you can not comprehend the astonishing levels of stupid we all start out with. Actually, scratch that, nobody can truly comprehend it; it's like trying to imagine being a fish or something, you can't really do it. The idea that all the parents I know have managed to educate our babies about their place in the social order despite them not responding to their name or indeed much of anything else is just absurd. I have every intention of letting my boy, and any future children I may have, grow up to be whoever they are most suited to be, regardless of gender roles in society. But whether or not I bring gender roles to the party, it is pretty clear to me that the child will anyhow.

tokenadult 18y ago

I agree that it would take a much more rigorous look at what social influences boys and girls encounter to show that genes rather than environment drive male-female differences. Most children are probably quite responsive to what they are expected to do, even if those expectations are never verbalized. That would be expected from the evolutionary history of children learning most of what it takes to be human from social groups. What did you think of the blog author's comments on the suitability of school for boys and for girls, as we find them today?

ellyagg 18y ago
There is absolutely scads of research showing that boys and girls are different from day 1. Boy and girl infants react differently to the same stimuli in controlled experiments. I'm not doing your research for you, though; look it up.
- xenophanes 18y ago
  I've read some such research. Never found any that was valid, though. Do you have one cite that you're especially confident is correct? Bear in mind that "genetically react differently to some stimuli" is not the same thing as "genetically has a gender role". The study would need to bridge that gap or it can't validly offer any conclusion about gender roles.
  - jibiki 18y ago
    Here's one I found on google: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4K-4BVNR3H-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=acc918c6c815d0bd29232d2fcbdc9026 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi... I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Obviously there are genetic differences between men and women. It seems like you're saying these differences are purely physical, but that's a meaningless statement to those of us who don't believe in dualism.
  - tungstenfurnace 18y ago
    Hi Xenophanes. I would like to remind you of my theory, which stems from the fact that boys and girls are born with slightly different brains (due to genetics). You will say that that doesn't matter: brains are universal computers. Well, yes. However they are also a key part of the environment of the developing mind. Our environments influence what choices we make (by controlling the options and their relative costs, not by making the choices). For example, if I am born near the sea then I am more likely to learn to swim before my cousin, who lives far from the sea. He lives in the mountains, and thus he is more likely to learn to climb first. In the same way, boys and girls may have different susceptibilities to various memes, because their brain environments have differentially influenced their choices. Under this model, average male and female behaviour will eventually converge. How? Because, assuming one progresses and lives long enough, parochial theories are replaced by universal ones. And one's biological sex and the memes I referred to are parochial factors.

jerf 18y ago

Do you have any children? I've got an eight-month old boy. I can't claim to be the world's expert and I won't pretend this isn't an anecdote, but still, it's a data point. I'm also 30. If you are 16 and you think you know what raising a baby is about, you're probably wrong, but if you make it to 30 without having some sort of good idea, you're... well, I won't call you an idiot but you've not been paying attention. So I had a good idea about how helpless babies are and a pretty good idea of how they got their needs met. I've not been surprised by the midnight feedings or anything else like that. But I will admit to some surprise at just how mind-bogglingly stupid babies are. My son is toying with the idea of beginning "separation anxiety", which psychologists think is not merely "a phase", but the point at which the baby begins to distinguish between himself and his parents. Think about what that means for a moment. We're talking about an entity too stupid to realize that other people are not himself. This is a level of stupidity we can only comprehend symbolically; we can not really grasp this degree of stupidity. My son is too stupid to realize that he is not me. He is way to stupid to pick up on subtle social messages about what it means to "be a man", were I even trying to give any. There is simply no way that Nature is not the dominant force here; there's simply nowhere for Nuture to be living! And yet... he is a boy. He likes to be loud, and I don't mean "cry", I mean be loud when he's happy. He likes to move and squirm. He likes cars and construction equipment, spurns the dolls of other babies (when he loves their other new things), and really loves my laptop, which means there's a lot of fun to be had keeping him away from that in my future. (As in, "I don't want him to destroy it"; we're years away from any actual use of a computer.) He likes to move around, and he likes to smack his toys to make them do things. I've also seen several other girls of this age cohort now, and even the ones that are high-strung and nervous when it comes to crying play radically more calmly, have clearly different preferences for toys, and so on. What social signals can we possibly be sending a four-month old baby to tell them how their gender behaves? Screw "not understanding gender", a four-month old doesn't understand that things persist when they move out of their vision! How is a being that was only recently introduced to "color" (not that they can articulate it) picking up on these social cues? How can something so stupid that he doesn't respond to his own name suddenly get so socially smart that he realizes that the doll I just placed in his hand is a parent-being-funny trap, and he's supposed to drop it and pick the truck up again? (Which is what he did.) Maybe a five-year old has picked up on it by then, but what accounts for the gender differences between 5-month-olds? Until you have a baby, you can not comprehend the astonishing levels of stupid we all start out with. Actually, scratch that, nobody can truly comprehend it; it's like trying to imagine being a fish or something, you can't really do it. The idea that all the parents I know have managed to educate our babies about their place in the social order despite them not responding to their name or indeed much of anything else is just absurd. I have every intention of letting my boy, and any future children I may have, grow up to be whoever they are most suited to be, regardless of gender roles in society. But whether or not I bring gender roles to the party, it is pretty clear to me that the child will anyhow.