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until they decide to have children which is a free choice of theirs
apart from Northern Ireland, where that choice is denied to them, mostly by middle aged white men.
Especially when we know that the brains are physically different. Remarkably so when we know that the brains are physically different from mid-gestation (before society can be blamed) and this is due to a ‘dump’ of testosterone by the mother.
Genuinely curious as to where there is evidence available to suggest differences in function at birth?
I've not found anything done on new borns to demonstrate clear differences exist. Also nothing thay demonstrates impacts they have on apperent tendencies / choices.
I think the research has yet to find any physical differences in brain structure but there's clearly something physiologically different between men and women, clearly so and it's the effect or hormones. Behaviour is to a large degree chemically managed/influenced.
there’s clearly something physiologically different between men and women
ON AVERAGE
The point I'm trying to make is that you cannot and MUST NOT treat people according to averages.
My point is this:
The article reports that the paper found very slight differences in the averages of the two scores for men and women.
The distribution of these scores will be normal distributed because they have a large sample size and, for population statistics like this, when you have a large sample size the Central Limit Theorem kicks in, therefore it's normally distributed.
If you overlay two normal distributions with very slightly different (mean) averages then you will find that they overlap a lot.
So, what the research really shows is that for the majority of men and women, their empathy and technical skill scores are indistinguishable! But the authors of the article have purposely misreported this to make a point.
I've always taken the view that all people deserve to be treated with fairness and respect, irrespective of their gender, race, social status, religious views, etc, etc. That is distinct from treating everyone equally, of course, since you might give up your bus seat for an obviously frail elderly chap, or a heavily pregnant woman, where you might not do so for a young man. But the ideal should be, essentially, that everyone gets a fair crack of the whip, whoever they may be.
The question is: what would we expect to see, if everyone got that fair crack of the whip? I used to take the view that we'd see broadly equal representation of men and women in all fields eventually. But studies like this do cast doubt on that view. If it's the case that women and men on average express slight personality differences, it seems reasonable to expect to see that reflected, in average, in society in general.
So, as molgrips said earlier, what do you do on the basis of that conclusion? I don't think you do anything directly. Certainly you don't start saying things like "ah, well, women are less good than men at X because of science, and therefore we can discourage them from e.g. STEM subjects with a clear conscience". But equally, it does question whether or not we should expect men and women to be equally represented in all fields across the board.
This said, I think the reporting of the research as linked in the OP is quite careful to caveat the findings:
In the paper, the authors discuss how it is important to bear in mind that differences observed in this study apply only to group averages, not to individuals. They underline that these data say nothing about an individual based on their gender, autism diagnosis, or occupation.
and:
Dr Varun Warrier, from the Cambridge team, said: “These sex differences in the typical population are very clear. We know from related studies that individual differences in empathy and systemising are partly genetic, partly influenced by our prenatal hormonal exposure, and partly due to environmental experience. We need to investigate the extent to which these observed sex differences are due to each of these factors, and how these interact."
So it's not as clear-cut as saying "men are mostly X and women are mostly Y and that's just the way we are"; it's more nuanced than that.
The point I’m trying to make is that you cannot and MUST NOT treat people according to averages.
I couldn't agree with you more; this is extremely important. However, it does mean that we should worry less about equalising the outcomes in various areas of society. For example, we shouldn't worry if the number of men in high level STEM roles is always higher (slightly) higher than women and in nursing roles the reverse. There needs to be a debate though as to the point at which we have normalised for preference in those outcomes. That part is not clear and it's hard to know when it's been achieved.
One other point: my reference to physiology was more obvious and blunt; men and women differ significantly in physiology and yet our brains are almost identical in structure. My point is that brain structures don't need to diverge in order for there to be obvious physiological differences. Something else is accounting for that.
If it’s the case that women and men on average express slight personality differences, it seems reasonable to expect to see that reflected, in average, in society in general.
Well no that doesn't reasonably follow, small differences in preference can give rise to big differences in outcome. The evidence for this is very clear in Scandanavia; these counties have gone further than anywhere to normalise for gender equality (in terms of choice and opportunity) and yet they have seen the complete reverse in terms of outcomes. When given more equality of opportunity, the gap between the choices that men and women make gets even larger than in countries where equality of opportunity is actually restricted.
The point I’m trying to make is that you cannot and MUST NOT treat people according to averages.
That's good in theory but impossible in reality. Medication dosage, treatment guidelines, health advice, insurance, pay equity bike sizing and on and on are all based on averages. The thing about using averages is you can usually predict with frightening accuracy how many people will fall within how much of the average. That's why it works as well as it does.
To go back to your example of number of legs - in that situation you would use the median number, which I will get any amount you want is bang on 2, because the median is less susceptible to outliers (which is why it is very often used when dealing with income)
Illustration of what nerd and others are saying. This is from the actual paper. Look at the control group lines. These show small differences between males and females, which are statistically significant because of the huge size of the sample.
No one's trying to dispute that there are small differences in how men and women score on various psychometric measures. There are questions as to why this might be the case - crudely nature/nurture - and neurosci actually shows not much difference between men's and wonen's brains (ah google for refs saini rings a bell). Main point is sure small differences: so what? Would you treat anyone differently, make any policy changes because of this? Obviously not.
All very interesting stuff in pursuit if trying to better understand how best to structure our society
Let me channel a Lobster perspective:
There (my bold, your quote) is the rub. And the current battleground. Socialism vs Realism.
It's easy really. History as always has the answer.
Send the men to the boardrooms, labs, workshops and battlefields
Send the ladies to the sandwich and bandage factories until they give us babies, then kitchen.
We shouldn't meddle with hundreds of years of evolution. Look what it brought us the last time we tried that? An all-female Ghostbusters is what it brought us. A pseudo-female Dr Who is what we now have. Feminist brainwashing of male prison inmates is what it brought us. Shrieking, blue-haired, man-hating harpies is what it brought us. Man-babies who knew not how to rescue their father from the belly of the whale. Is where it has brought us.
I've heard all of the whining/arguments from the Post-Marxist Cultural Modernist Communist Justice Warriors, and to be completely frank they fail at the starting gate.
Take (for example) the baseline hierarchical binary chroma of Male vs Female:
Male = Blue (A primary colour). Blue-sky thinking, cool-headed, organising, clarity, fresh air, sometimes too cool ie ice blue, rugged, individualistic)
Female = Pink (a secondary colour). Blend of red anger/sexuality and white purity/chastity, an unpredictably mixture of warm pink (ie nurturing) with hot pink/red (ie disagreement and bloody confusion)
These hierarchical binary chroma representations of M vs F are not arbitrary in the way that Communistic Modernist Justice Idealogues try and restructure society. By contrast, the binary chroma are the very bedrock of our society. The 'substrate' in which we continue iur species. The fertile soil where we nurture and respect our traditions. If you try and cut our boys and girls 'free' from these archetypes we will see the chaos that we see today. We won't even recognise ourselves as human
Sweden has already tried this social experiment, and what happened? Nature/God spaketh unto them, is what happened. The result was swift, decisive and catastrophic for our Post Marxist Culturalists. A walloping effect. The data is in, and they don't bloody like it. Well, it's like, sorry, but you'll just have to deal with it. Here's how it is:
Try and socialist-engineer a girl to be more like a boy and she will respond by becoming even more like a girl. Even the salty tears of defeated socialists cannot wash away this universal truth. In other words, even with a rocket up the ass she won't choose rocket science over domestic science. In fact she'll now choose nail art,
Male and female are meant to complement each other, not compete with one another. Men are meant to compete against other men for access to a woman. Women are meant to compete with other women to attract a man. Natural selection doesn't care about (communist) feels. Reality deals with reals not feels.
So if you're a mewling manboy who has slipped too far into the post-modern arbitrary/metrosexual world of typing, shopping, vegetarianism and the wearing of slack, unisex pseudo-sporty clothing - then STOP. Just stop.
Instead go grab yourself a par of stiff-soled brogues and a sharp waistcoat. Straighten up. Try a cane with a silver-inlaid antler-handle and a claw ferrule. A monogrammed kerchief. You'll find that you will begin to respect yourself, and (importantly) shall command respect from others.
If OTOH, you are a sadlypseudomanlywoman who was literally pushed down the communist manifesto path to the very threshold of the manworld, then you already know that you have since rebelled and become even more womanly.
They (postmodernist socialist femitards) may have won a few pyrrhic victories (losses for our species) along the way, but they will not (and cannot) win the war. So what now? Men? Go rescue your father from that whale. Go and be victorious. And you 'oppressed' women? Quit whining and get hobby.
I idly dipped back in here just to see if people were lowering themselves to the OP's level by taking his drivel seriously. I didn't expect that Malvern Rider!
Magnificent.
OP’s level by taking his drivel seriously. I didn’t expect that Malvern Rider!
I assumed he was taking the piss?
Let’s pretend most girls like dolls instead of car toys. Should we have segregated toy shops with a girl section and a boy section? If we do that, any girls who want car toys would feel dissuaded from wanting to play with them and feel frustrated with being pigeon holed, etc etc. No, we should just put the dolls in the doll section and the cars in the car section and let them get on with it.
Er... Are you really this naive?
eg. Have you never been in a SMYTHs store? it IS segregated. it just doesn't say so in writing.
Edit:
monogrammed handkerchief.
Kerchiefs is for the womens*.
*And I'm being descriptive, not prescriptive so lower your lather, you lowly pomo-s!
As you were.
I assumed he was taking the piss?
The OP? Of course not.
MR? Possibly the finest piss-take this site has ever seen.
Let me channel a Lobster perspective:
Rock on! That's pretty much perfect...
Er… Are you really this naive?
eg. Have you never been in a SMYTHs store? it IS segregated. it just doesn’t say so in writing.
As a parent, yes, loads and loads of times. We do have segregated toy shops, the question is SHOULD we?
That’s good in theory but impossible in reality. Medication dosage, treatment guidelines, health advice, insurance, pay equity bike sizing and on and on are all based on averages. The thing about using averages is you can usually predict with frightening accuracy how many people will fall within how much of the average. That’s why it works as well as it does.
You MUST NOT treat INDIVIDUALS as averages.
As I tried to point out - things like buying a doll for a girl because girls like dolls, instead of asking them what they want - this is bad. This is of course only an example, and it runs far deeper than that in society.
The toy shops only want to treat people as averages because they have realised that on average they can get girls to respond to girl based marketing better and sell more girly shit. Which is good for them, but bad for our kids.
So most drillers of earth (drillers of Earth?) are male. What do we learn from this? Males are more inclined to be drillers of Earth because of the physical makeup of their brain? Or because we have spent many centuries keeping it from the ladeez of the species that there is a job called "drillers of Earth"? Or is it just that the toilets at places where earth is drilled are stinky, which puts the women off? I think we need more affirmative action in the world of drillers of Earth.
What do we learn from this?
That depends whether learning constitutes putting your fingers in your ears and crying about Trump.
A woman on an oil rig would be a terrible idea. Hence customarily no women oil rigs.
Her kids would miss her and the male coworkers would want to boff her.
Her husband would feel less of a man at home. Jealousy would destroy the family unit.
Losers all around. So why do pomos choose losing and call it winning? Tin foil hat says because patriarchy! Something something orange man bad, Trump, cucks etc.
So most drillers of earth (drillers of Earth?) are male. What do we learn from this? Males are more inclined to be drillers of Earth because of the physical makeup of their brain? Or because we have spent many centuries keeping it from the ladeez of the species that there is a job called “drillers of Earth”? Or is it just that the toilets at places where earth is drilled are stinky, which puts the women off? I think we need more affirmative action in the world of drillers of Earth.
That dirty, physically hard and dangerous jobs are done by men. Cos, y'know evolution.
Like prostitution?
You MUST NOT treat INDIVIDUALS as averages
That's okay if you are dealing with e.g. what subject your daughter should study in school but utterly impossible if you are designing a curriculum for all 12 (or whatever age) children in the land.
To your toyshop example, early studies show that the more equal a society becomes (e.g. Scandinavian countries) that is, the more equality of opportunity there is, the outcomes become more polarized, not less. One interpretation is that if you let people choose what they want they feel free to express themselves and gender differences naturally occur to a greater not lesser extent.
Mere statistics.
In the real world, as Depeche Mode told us, people are people.
Interesting thread.
The more we strive for equality of opportunity, the closer we get to being able to formulate the right question. 🙂
There is no legitimate reason to demand we all take one step backwards because you don't like the game anymore.
OP’s level by taking his drivel seriously
It's not 'my drivel' it's published and respected academic research. I know that is an uncomfortabletruth for you though which is why you resort to ad homenins.
The more we strive for equality of opportunity
We already have this though, which is why the battle ground has shifted to trying to equalise outcomes, which is a horrendously bad idea and why any intelligent person opposes it and why I post about it. Equalising outcomes is a rdiculous construct and all the evidence shows that it's not what people want.
The more we strive for equality of opportunity
We already have this though
I'm not convinced we do - yet, but it does appear to me that we are (or ar in danger of) falsely striving for equality of outcome.
We already have this though, which is why the battle ground has shifted to trying to equalise outcomes
Battleground? Give over. 🙂
We've always had ways of 'equalising outcomes'. From charity, altruism and friendship to a strive for universal suffrage.
As a species It's usually seen as one of our more pleasant traits.
It’s not ‘my drivel’ it’s published and respected academic research. I know that is an uncomfortabletruth for you though which is why you resort to ad homenins.
The thing that's uncomfortable for me is seeing someone who probably has the potential to be a decent human being wasting his time - AND ALL OF OURS - trying to push a twisted, sinister agenda.
The drivel is the simplistic, transparent spin you try to put on "respected academic research".
Get over yourself and get help. Please.
Get over yourself
It's not respected research, though, is it?
At least 3 of us have poked massive holes in the methodology. I can think of at least two ways of restructuring the analysis to make it more robust.
I'm very disappointed this was published in PNAS, that's usually a quality journal. I had a paper published in PNAS 10 years ago so I'm bound to say that. We had much more rigorous statistics than this paper.
If I'd have been reviewing it, I wouldn't have let it pass. However, I know how the academic publishing racket works, so I'm not surprised.
Would expect the statistical analysis in that paper to be bulletproof. Psychologists get too much ridicule as it stands to bollox up something that simple. A maths paper OTOH is way more likely to peddle bobbins stats, as no one would presume to question the aristocrats of the academy on something so prosaic.
The 'data' itself, though - Half a million self-reporting questionnaires off a telly program? Don't know abar that - seems more suitable for J. Bolloxology, but then again I suppose you have to take a mass media approach to build very large datasets in this area.
I haven't read the entire thread, but anyone who's entertained by this might want to google the American comedian Jordan Peterson, who does a brilliant parody of this sort of thing. He's kind of like Sasha Baron Cohen or Alan Partridge.
"Equalising outcomes is a rdiculous construct and all the evidence shows that it’s not what people want."
It's sad to think of girls being forced into STEM (frequently seen as the measurement of equality) at the altar of feminism. I see it happening.
Here is a good analysis of why this piece of research and the ideas behind it are utter rubbish and further links to analysis for reputable people in the feild.. Read it and learn
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/18/not-all-pink-and-blue-when-its-comes-to-our-brains
Here is another demolition of this useless piece of "research"
https://cosmicshambles.com/words/blogs/deanburnett/male-and-female-brains
The researchers in the press release do confirm that the data from their study doesn’t actually reveal what the cause of the sex differences demonstrated. It could be genetic, it could be hormonal, it could be influences and pressures from the culture in which we develop.
It’s sad to think of girls being forced into STEM (frequently seen as the measurement of equality) at the altar of feminism. I see it happening.
Sad to see anyone forced into anything..... How many men are forced into these areas over jobs in care and other empathetic careers.
Dunno where I fit into this anyway. I have some significant autistic traits, work in a highly empathic field, am very systematic in my approach to things.
And there is clear evidence of underreporting / under diagnosis of autism in women - why - gender bias!
The only surveys/studies worth their salt are those with which we may convince ourselves that we were 'right all along'
97.9% cats agree.