3 ms·

It can be damaging to talk about what any one group is better or worse at, statistically, because it leads some people to stereotype all members of that group.

It can be damaging to talk about what any one group is better or worse at, statistically, because it leads some people to stereotype all members of that group. And I believe that most people that talk about things like this don't actually have statistic to back them up. For example, it's a pretty common to joke about "women drivers" and yet insurance companies, the folks with the most information, tend to charge women less because they're less likely to be in accidents, get speeding tickets, or DUIs. Bone-headed people say bone-headed things and try to back them up with "common knowledge" that's just misinformation rooted in traditional views. In regards to your wife, that can be different. I assume you're aren't saying things like "she's good at juggling because she's a woman" and instead just "she's good at juggling because she, as one individual, is good at juggling." My wife is amazing at art. It's not because she's a woman but because she's spent time practicing.

lhnz 13y ago
Our brains are physically different [0]. As much as I believe in the 'nurture' argument, given that our brains are wired very differently based on gender, I find it difficult to believe that this won't cause differences in both desire and aptitude. It seems absurd to me that so many smart people have to make the nurture XOR nature argument, and that there are so few people making nurture AND nature arguments. Adjunct to this is that old chestnut about how we socialise girls to like toys they can care for and boys to like cars. Here we also now have evidence that suggests that we are born this way and the socialisation is just on top of what we started with [1]. I'm not trying to make the argument that it is more nature than nurture or that I know the precise underpinnings of a decent model. I just think that we needlessly politicise something which in my opinion will eventually be in the reach of empiricism. I hope that the open-minded liberals will fare better than traditionalists in managing the separation between science and their own values. [0] http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/male-and-female-brains-really-are-built-differently/281962/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/male-and-f... [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/
- erikpukinskis 13y ago
  > Our brains are physically different [0]. You do realize that brains change in response to their experiences, right? That there are differences says nothing about whether the differences come from being treated differently by society. And regardless, to the extent that there are genetic differences (as there certainly are), we still have no credible way to map those differences to phenotypes as complex and deep into development as "ability to program". That said, if programming involved a lot of playing with toy cars, you might have the beginnings of an argument.
  - newnewnew 13y ago
    Sexual dimorphism is incredibly common in the animal kingdom, and humans are not an exception. You are setting up a non-falsifiable belief system that asserts that men and women cannot be different above the neck. If that's what lets you sleep at night, who am I to deny you your comforting faith? But you are fighting against mountains of evidence for cognitive differences between men and women. Are they all cultural? I'm friends with a few post-treatment transgendered people, and I'm inclined to believe at least that hormones have a powerful impact on personality.
    - erikpukinskis 13y ago
      Some things are non-falsifiable. And I find it funny that you follow up that accusation with anecdotal thoughts about hormones. Just because we haven't found a falsifiable way to test a hypothesis doesn't mean you can take "mountains" of research that make very specific conclusions and randomly apply them to whatever generalization you want to.
      - newnewnew 13y ago
        It's good to have on record that you believe in sexual egalitarianism in homo sapiens regardless of any evidence that can be brought to bear. I posted this (admittedly incomplete) list of resources down the page, but let it not be said that I did not do my anti-progressive duty today: http://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/#sex http://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/#sex

lhnz 13y ago

Our brains are physically different [0]. As much as I believe in the 'nurture' argument, given that our brains are wired very differently based on gender, I find it difficult to believe that this won't cause differences in both desire and aptitude. It seems absurd to me that so many smart people have to make the nurture XOR nature argument, and that there are so few people making nurture AND nature arguments. Adjunct to this is that old chestnut about how we socialise girls to like toys they can care for and boys to like cars. Here we also now have evidence that suggests that we are born this way and the socialisation is just on top of what we started with [1]. I'm not trying to make the argument that it is more nature than nurture or that I know the precise underpinnings of a decent model. I just think that we needlessly politicise something which in my opinion will eventually be in the reach of empiricism. I hope that the open-minded liberals will fare better than traditionalists in managing the separation between science and their own values. [0] http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/male-and-female-brains-really-are-built-differently/281962/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/male-and-f... [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/

erikpukinskis 13y ago
> Our brains are physically different [0]. You do realize that brains change in response to their experiences, right? That there are differences says nothing about whether the differences come from being treated differently by society. And regardless, to the extent that there are genetic differences (as there certainly are), we still have no credible way to map those differences to phenotypes as complex and deep into development as "ability to program". That said, if programming involved a lot of playing with toy cars, you might have the beginnings of an argument.
- newnewnew 13y ago
  Sexual dimorphism is incredibly common in the animal kingdom, and humans are not an exception. You are setting up a non-falsifiable belief system that asserts that men and women cannot be different above the neck. If that's what lets you sleep at night, who am I to deny you your comforting faith? But you are fighting against mountains of evidence for cognitive differences between men and women. Are they all cultural? I'm friends with a few post-treatment transgendered people, and I'm inclined to believe at least that hormones have a powerful impact on personality.
  - erikpukinskis 13y ago
    Some things are non-falsifiable. And I find it funny that you follow up that accusation with anecdotal thoughts about hormones. Just because we haven't found a falsifiable way to test a hypothesis doesn't mean you can take "mountains" of research that make very specific conclusions and randomly apply them to whatever generalization you want to.
    - newnewnew 13y ago
      It's good to have on record that you believe in sexual egalitarianism in homo sapiens regardless of any evidence that can be brought to bear. I posted this (admittedly incomplete) list of resources down the page, but let it not be said that I did not do my anti-progressive duty today: http://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/#sex http://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/#sex