4 ms·

This true and known, though the researcher didn't mention an important piece - men have a much, much larger standard deviation of intelligence/success/etc than

This true and known, though the researcher didn't mention an important piece - men have a much, much larger standard deviation of intelligence/success/etc than women. So men are more heavily represented in engineering, physics, mathematics, etc, but they're also more frequently mentally retarded, homeless, die of homicide, commit suicide, and wind up incarcerated - general "failing" type things. One hypothesis is that for most of history, the difference in results between being "above average" and "exceptional" was very large for men, and a less so for women. So you've seen men go on dangerous trading journeys, fight for honor/prestige/titles/land, engage in duels and competitions, fight wars, break paradigms, take on establishments, and so on. Whereas for a woman - historically speaking - by simply being reasonably capable in all of the duties society expected of a woman, she could find a husband. For a woman, the best strategy would be to be a bit above average and work to progress, but not take huge risks. For men, taking victory or death type risks might've made more sense. One of the most interesting statistics I read was about what percent of people historically had children - I believe the numbers were estimated at 80% of women and 40% of men (not sure if this is all people, or people who survived infancy which was a legit problem back then). If this sort of thing interests you, there's lots of information and statistics here: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm Very interesting read, I saw it here on HN originally. The difference in standard deviation/failure rates between men and women surprised me, but it made a lot of things make sense after reading it.

aquateen 17y ago
FTA: "Although [men and women] are on average the same, the people at the very top and the very bottom of the IQ bell curve are more likely to be men. That is a pattern that we see in the university setting, with men either being at the very top of the class or at the bottom."
- ssanders82 17y ago
  I have a real problem with them jumping from intelligence to university academic success. When I was in school and had to develop team projects, if everything else was equal I'd go for a girl partner every time. Not that I thought they were any more intelligent on average but very frequently they just cared more. I could see it in their solo work as well - on average they just put in more hours than the guys.
- sketerpot 17y ago
  That certainly fits with what I've observed in every school I've ever been in.
- davidmathers 17y ago
  OT, I wonder how different the world would be if Larry Summers hadn't said that in his speech. He might still be president of Harvard and Obama would have chosen someone else to direct the NEC. Such large consequences from such a small thing.
DaniFong 17y ago
As I wrote two years ago, people do not fit Gaussian distributions as neatly as many imagine (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65408 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65408): "The thing is that intelligence isn't some kind of nice, statistically normed quantity. There's more to most variables than a mean and a standard deviation -- so I don't know why people seem to always think that you can restrict a discussion of intelligence to such concepts. One thing that is actually correct is that there's more variation in gene expression between men and women. On of the reasons for this is because, chromosomally, women have two X chromosomes, which pair up, and then randomly one or another turns off. These means that the gene expression is mixed between both parents. On the other hand, the Y chromosome is largely only effective at turning off gene expression. You can see how there's less redundancy here. But intelligence isn't a gene. Researchers have, since the time of Dalton, tried to find a simple, biological basis for genius. You know, memory capacity, reaction times, brain size, brain structure convolution, etc. They haven't found anything -- literally everything has turned out to be a false start, even brain size, which, has been shown, within families does not even predict g. In the mid ranges, there are greater standard deviations, yes. But every single normed test is normed on a sample on the order of 1000. They're designed for regular people. The designer of the Weschler has adamantly opposed the use of IQ tests for anything other than clinical settings, for this reason. It's just no good at drawing conclusions on the extremes of ability. A better guide might be actual performance. The IOI this year had more girls than ever before -- 11. That's nearly 300% more than last year, where they had 4, and one medal. They are: Emina Bukva (Bosnia and Herzegovina) Constanza Contreras (Chile) Anna Currel (Spain) Romina Huenchunao (Chile) Vaiva Imbrasaite (Lithuania) Taksapaun Kittiakrastien (Thailand) [Silver] Sepideh Mahabadi (Iran) [Gold!] Radwa Metwali (Egypt) Katie O'Mahony (Ireland) Phitchaya Phothilimthana (Thailand) [Silver] Ye Wang (USA) [Silver] Sepideh Mahabadi had one of the best performances of anyone. If you're familiar with IOI scoring, only the top 1/12 are to get golds, and 2/12 to get silvers, thus 1 gold and 3 silvers out of 11 implies that they did at least as good as the boys, and in fact somewhat better. Were the 'standard deviation' explanation correct they should have, instead, had 0.4 girls earning maybe 0.01 medals. It just doesn't work. Psychometrics are a non-science."
geebee 17y ago
One hypothesis is that for most of history, the difference in results between being "above average" and "exceptional" was very large for men, and a less so for women. So you've seen men go on dangerous trading journeys, fight for honor/prestige/titles/land, engage in duels and competitions, fight wars, break paradigms, take on establishments, and so on. Whereas for a woman - historically speaking - by simply being reasonably capable in all of the duties society expected of a woman, she could find a husband. For a woman, the best strategy would be to be a bit above average and work to progress, but not take huge risks. For men, taking victory or death type risks might've made more sense. This is almost certainly true, but clearly many women doexhibit very high levels of risk taking and status-seeking. I think that we may have underestimated the evolutionary rewards for risk taking among women. Regardless of how you feel about Hillary Clinton's politics, it's impossible to claim that she took a low-risk approach to life. And why would women strive so much to become top models, actresses, musicians, and artists if the evolutionary rewards were so low? Even women they don't exhibit quite as much risk-seeking behavior as men, there's still an awful lot of it. One thing I've read (mainly in popular evolutionary psych type books and articles) is that very high status women have two big advantages: a much greater opportunity to mate with the highest status men, and the ability to confer this status upon their children (violence is rare among the matriarchal bonobos, but apparently females do fight pretty viciously over their son's status in the mating pecking order)... People often point out that males can reproduce much more than females, which justifies a higher degree of risk taking (again from the pov of DNA trying to spread), but if status can be conferred on the next generation, females have almost as much ability to do this too...

aquateen 17y ago

FTA: "Although [men and women] are on average the same, the people at the very top and the very bottom of the IQ bell curve are more likely to be men. That is a pattern that we see in the university setting, with men either being at the very top of the class or at the bottom."

ssanders82 17y ago
I have a real problem with them jumping from intelligence to university academic success. When I was in school and had to develop team projects, if everything else was equal I'd go for a girl partner every time. Not that I thought they were any more intelligent on average but very frequently they just cared more. I could see it in their solo work as well - on average they just put in more hours than the guys.
sketerpot 17y ago
That certainly fits with what I've observed in every school I've ever been in.
davidmathers 17y ago
OT, I wonder how different the world would be if Larry Summers hadn't said that in his speech. He might still be president of Harvard and Obama would have chosen someone else to direct the NEC. Such large consequences from such a small thing.

DaniFong 17y ago

As I wrote two years ago, people do not fit Gaussian distributions as neatly as many imagine (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65408 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65408): "The thing is that intelligence isn't some kind of nice, statistically normed quantity. There's more to most variables than a mean and a standard deviation -- so I don't know why people seem to always think that you can restrict a discussion of intelligence to such concepts. One thing that is actually correct is that there's more variation in gene expression between men and women. On of the reasons for this is because, chromosomally, women have two X chromosomes, which pair up, and then randomly one or another turns off. These means that the gene expression is mixed between both parents. On the other hand, the Y chromosome is largely only effective at turning off gene expression. You can see how there's less redundancy here. But intelligence isn't a gene. Researchers have, since the time of Dalton, tried to find a simple, biological basis for genius. You know, memory capacity, reaction times, brain size, brain structure convolution, etc. They haven't found anything -- literally everything has turned out to be a false start, even brain size, which, has been shown, within families does not even predict g. In the mid ranges, there are greater standard deviations, yes. But every single normed test is normed on a sample on the order of 1000. They're designed for regular people. The designer of the Weschler has adamantly opposed the use of IQ tests for anything other than clinical settings, for this reason. It's just no good at drawing conclusions on the extremes of ability. A better guide might be actual performance. The IOI this year had more girls than ever before -- 11. That's nearly 300% more than last year, where they had 4, and one medal. They are: Emina Bukva (Bosnia and Herzegovina) Constanza Contreras (Chile) Anna Currel (Spain) Romina Huenchunao (Chile) Vaiva Imbrasaite (Lithuania) Taksapaun Kittiakrastien (Thailand) [Silver] Sepideh Mahabadi (Iran) [Gold!] Radwa Metwali (Egypt) Katie O'Mahony (Ireland) Phitchaya Phothilimthana (Thailand) [Silver] Ye Wang (USA) [Silver] Sepideh Mahabadi had one of the best performances of anyone. If you're familiar with IOI scoring, only the top 1/12 are to get golds, and 2/12 to get silvers, thus 1 gold and 3 silvers out of 11 implies that they did at least as good as the boys, and in fact somewhat better. Were the 'standard deviation' explanation correct they should have, instead, had 0.4 girls earning maybe 0.01 medals. It just doesn't work. Psychometrics are a non-science."

geebee 17y ago

One hypothesis is that for most of history, the difference in results between being "above average" and "exceptional" was very large for men, and a less so for women. So you've seen men go on dangerous trading journeys, fight for honor/prestige/titles/land, engage in duels and competitions, fight wars, break paradigms, take on establishments, and so on. Whereas for a woman - historically speaking - by simply being reasonably capable in all of the duties society expected of a woman, she could find a husband. For a woman, the best strategy would be to be a bit above average and work to progress, but not take huge risks. For men, taking victory or death type risks might've made more sense. This is almost certainly true, but clearly many women doexhibit very high levels of risk taking and status-seeking. I think that we may have underestimated the evolutionary rewards for risk taking among women. Regardless of how you feel about Hillary Clinton's politics, it's impossible to claim that she took a low-risk approach to life. And why would women strive so much to become top models, actresses, musicians, and artists if the evolutionary rewards were so low? Even women they don't exhibit quite as much risk-seeking behavior as men, there's still an awful lot of it. One thing I've read (mainly in popular evolutionary psych type books and articles) is that very high status women have two big advantages: a much greater opportunity to mate with the highest status men, and the ability to confer this status upon their children (violence is rare among the matriarchal bonobos, but apparently females do fight pretty viciously over their son's status in the mating pecking order)... People often point out that males can reproduce much more than females, which justifies a higher degree of risk taking (again from the pov of DNA trying to spread), but if status can be conferred on the next generation, females have almost as much ability to do this too...