I feel like it might be a cause of being a bit older but my (single) mother always said that women and men were equal in worth not aptitude.
Her exact words were “men and women are equal but different, in many ways they’re complimentary” she then explained that some men look down on women because they didn’t value how women think about things. She also said the same is true of some women viewing men.
Later she would say that men and women are equally shitty to each other (when I was being abused at school by girls who knew I could not physically retaliate).
I currently hold these views and neither feminism nor men’s-rights-activists seem to ascribe to those values, at best they pay lip service to the notion that we’re (on average, and grossly generalising) complimentary.
I remember a small blurb about “judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree” in reference to our education system-
Maybe it’s a old way of thinking. Maybe my mum wasn’t right at all, but I don’t understand why we can’t celebrate our differences instead of expecting women to fit in to men sized roles. Or alternatively making a “middle-ground” box which has to fit both sexes.
If anyone wants to alter my way of thinking; I’m completely open to it- I am perfectly willing to accept that I’m old fashioned or incorrect here.
I don't really have a horse in this race, but the reason women might want to fit in to man-sized roles is because all the high-paying roles are man-sized.
And because money (and power) is all that counts nowadays right?
There was a time where it was not a shame if a woman chose to stay at home. Nowadays, people toll their eyes if my wife tells them about her (very own) choice..
I think this post was made in bad faith to the argument of the poster. Money and therefore power matter a lot in a society in which you must purchase almost all of your basic goods with it. housing, food, water, etc. Up to a certain point money does track with quality of life, and the point in which it ceases to be the case is well above median wealth. If we were to evaluate that it is normal for women to have less paying jobs because women’s work is worth less pay, then the knock off effect is that women aren’t worth a quality of life equal to men on average.
Also, I am under the impression that rolling ones eyes at a choice to stay at home is a continued devaluation of women’s work. The upkeep of a living location and the caring of any little humans is a significant labor, such that upon outsourcing is often equivalent to a median yearly salary of a single person. However because there isn’t a common framework to evaluate worth beyond money in the society I live in, unpaid labor isn’t valued.
While I fully agree that people should accept that some people are driven by things other than money, and even beyond that, it should be perfectly socially acceptable to be driven by other goals instead...
People who are driven by money, no matter gender, skin color, etc shouldn't be held back from it because of preconceptions about their ability. Only their actual ability should matter.
Yet the us does not have mandatory maternity leave. Money is choices. That people must sacrifice it in order to do things like raise children is evidence that our society does not value homemaking.
I don't really have a solid response to that argument other than that I think we as a society need to stop emphasising traits that are predominantly held by men and start appreciating the traits that are predominantly held by women, those traits are incredibly valuable.
To give a concrete example: Dame Caroline Haslett who was the President of the Women's Engineering Society in Britain created objectively the safest electrical outlet and plugging mechanism ever conceived (as long as you don't step on one). There was no such mandate for it to be so safe, you could argue that a man could have done exactly the same but I'd rather consider that she was being extremely empathetic as to how the device would be used and that safety in this area would quite literally save the lives of men, women and children.
A world without her contribution would be a lesser one, but I would argue that it was made with her femininity, not with how much she filled a man-shaped role.
>but I'd rather consider that she was being extremely empathetic
Believing science is one thing, but that sounds like exactly the sort of "gendered narrative building" that feminists are trying to fight against. When they say stuff like "gender roles are fictional," a large part of it is due to people inventing stories in their heads about gender roles that aren't true. I think that it's fair to not try to add anything beyond what's demonstrably there.
> I think that it's fair to not try to add anything beyond what's demonstrably there.
Why? If peoples' experiences and psychology (in my layman's understanding of agreeableness) show that women tend to be more empathetic than men, it seems perfectly reasonable for them to suggest that that may have benefited an inventor in a fantastic discovery they made. People have no obligation to buy into others' narratives. Groups can claim whatever they want is fictional, it doesn't mean everyone else has to censor their speech accordingly.
I thought the person you were responding to was making a very thoughtful point, and one that was very respectful of women and the valuable insight some of them have that is often overlooked.
> I thought the person you were responding to was making a very thoughtful point, and one that was very respectful of women and the valuable insight some of them have that is often overlooked.
The problem is his comment can very easily be read as "Women should do what they are good at". This implies "taking care of kids and home" for many invested in this narrative. On contested topic like this, we should try to phrase our comments very clearly.
> People have no obligation to buy into others' narratives.
Our society seems to work best if we agree on fundamental "narratives". Equal opportunity being good is one of them. Actually, not really, since perfect equal opportunity would require us to not be able to help our own children more than others can help theirs. But let's not get into capitalism/class stuff but back to gender.
A talking point the other side likes to make is "wanting equal outcomes". Nope, that would be stupid. But significantly unequal outcomes are a good indicator we'll find unequal opportunities when we look into it. Or some other reason. But the other side very quickly likes to accept "men and women are just different" as other reason and prefers to disregard e.g. fixing societal feedback loops via affirmative action. That finally brings me to your first part:
> If peoples' experiences and psychology (in my layman's understanding of agreeableness) show that women tend to be more empathetic than me
I don't think we have hard scientific research data showing to what degree this is based on nature or nurture. The latter would be problematic since against the spirit of equal opportunity. Of cause that question is hard to answer, since randomized controlled trials are impossible and understanding the physics and it's emergent properties is still beyond us.
Did you choose your role just because it is high-paying ?
Or were there are other factors e.g. stimulating, flexible, empowering, creative etc.
Because pretty sure women are selecting roles for a range of different factors as well. You know because all women aren't the same. Just like all men aren't the same.
Definitely the money. I can think of several career paths that likely would likely have made me happier but I didn't pursue them because I was able to do computer programming and why throw that potential money away.
But you said it yourself: "several career paths would likely have made me happier".
What's the point in living if not to be happy? Money is just a means to avoid unhappiness. It's been proven time and time again that after a decent income money does not increase happiness.
I've yet to find the point where more money doesn't make me happier. Money buys a lot of things that make you happy. Money is also more much more capable of making one's family happy than a job I like more than my current one is. It's not like I hate my job. I just like it less than the blue collar stuff I did before I got my degree. I don't have a trust fund. I have to make my own living and I optimized for doing that. Waxing poetic about "occupational fulfillment" is something the upper classes do after they've been upper class long enough to forget how well they have it. I don't care what other people think. Money is making me happy. My property is covered in classic cars in various states of disrepair, my fridge always has beer in it. My life is quite comfortable thanks to money. The ease with which money can be converted into things that bring me joy is unparalleled. Not taking all that for granted probably helps a lot.
Thanks for putting it this way. I have been struggling to articulate my position on the topic in such a succinct manner, but your post has set it straight for me. Not into classic cars or yearning for blue collar work myself, but the general sentiment is deeply relatable.
> I don't have a trust fund. I have to make my own living and I optimized for doing that. Waxing poetic about "occupational fulfillment" is something the upper classes do after they've been upper class long enough to forget how well they have it.
I also do not have a trust fund, actually the contrary, I grew up as poor as you can possibly be in the UK. Mother didn't work, had various vices including drinking and smoking which did not jive with our financial situation (living on benefits).
Due to that my mother put more worth into immaterial things, and that rubbed off on me I think.
Additionally; I've only been employed in a self-sustaining fashion for 8 years now. Perhaps I've lost what it feels like to be destitute- but I don't think I'd trade happiness for money because outside of not worrying about bills and food money doesn't actually buy me anything. Just a little more ease of mind.
The lower you start the lower the "more money will not improve my life anymore" number is. I have no desire to live in a nice neighborhood, drive new cars and drink fancy beer so the threshold where money stops improving my life is probably a couple tens of thousands of dollars per year lower than if I wanted those things but I still aspire to own vacation house so that pushes the number higher.
I think there's also some pretty big cultural differences between the US and western Europe when it comes to decisions to pursue money or not.
Yeah, software development's not a little more money than the other things I'd like to do, it's a lot, and also easier, and also less demanding of my time than some of them, and I can find a job almost anywhere (remote, even!) with no trouble.
I'm (reasonably) good at it. I don't like it much. But be slightly good and have a little experience in programming and if you're not careful pretty soon it's way better than most other options you've got, by every measure except "enjoy and am proud of what I do".
1. Taxi Driver: Uber and Lyft have significantly increased the number of women, and there are lots of efforts to get more women involved. https://www.gosafr.com/ is one example.
5. Enlisted military personnel: Hard to summarize here, but issues around women in the US military come up quite frequently in Congress and elsewhere, and the history of increasing participation and equality is long.
7. Disc jockey: Hard to find exact stats, but it's the same story as everywhere else in modern society. Used to be completely male dominated, now women are increasingly entering the industry and fighting against entrenched stereotypes. A random article: https://www.laweekly.com/music/women-djs-are-out-there-clubs...
8. Broadcaster: Feel like I'm starting to repeat myself. It's the same story as everywhere else in the media. Look at the Women's Media Center and other organizations for evidence of a push.
10. Painter: Seems to be similar to logging. I honestly don't know why. Presumably it's historically male (like everything), and it's not a particularly desirable career for anyone.
etc.
Industries like logging and painting are outliers. There are some jobs that are so physically demanding that men have a significant innate advantage, but there's no natural reason for any industry to be 95+% male.
Seems like he just posted 10 points to counter your shaky 1, then you proceeded to ignore every one of them before finishing off with an accusation of a straw-man argument.
But are the high paying roles man-sized or are the men shaping themselves to the high-paying roles?
There is evidence that women are judged by appearance and men by financial success. Even a mild effect would be more than enough to skew the outcomes; it would impact the more competitive representatives of each gender.
If being an aged care nurse suddenly paid handsomely I would bet that you'd find the field full of men in a mid term. Men make a habit out of taking whatever work makes them the best money.
This. I think we have to dismantle roles which have extreme expectations. If you're expected to be available 24/7 and basically abandon your family for your job, it's something which overwhelming selects for men, who have that classic role in society.
I think this is the most important question to solve if we want more equal outcome in worklife.
It not about high-paying roles. The industries that are talked about in gender segregation discussions are those that are high-paying, high social status jobs. A big difference.
When I was young the highest paying job direct out of high school was underwater welder. Not many teenage girls are signing up for that program, nor are there much political interest to get 50/50 gender ration for jobs that work in the dark, dangerous, on rusty oil rigs far away from land.
In a bit of irony, the same can be said for professions dominated by women. Hired midwifes during the summer vacation months here in Sweden are getting salaries up to 9k a month. Very few people here in Sweden has a monthly pay that high. Demand can skyrocket when you only recruit from half the population, at which point the employer will pay what the market demands.
It's not just an old way of thinking. It's frankly a dumb one.
There are many women who are physically, emotionally and intellectually stronger than many men. And they are more than capable of doing a "men sized role" just as well as any man. And the situation applies vice versa as well.
If you want to celebrate the differences between men and women, whatever that ever means, well then knock yourself out. But generalising the traits of billions of people is frankly insane and guaranteed to insult some decent size proportion of them.
I don't really know much about the science behind how men and women as populations differ. However, I wonder if it would be possible for society to have a more nuanced approach to these issues:
Encourage men and women as individuals to pursue roles that match their aptitudes and personalities even if they do not line up with their sex.
Provide wisdom or rules of thumb based on how men and women as populations may differ.
However, the problem that I would see with this approach is that humans tend to be lazy in their thinking, so general rules of thumb tend to become absolute rules.
>> I feel like it might be a cause of being a bit older but my (single) mother always said that women and men were equal in worth not aptitude.
My (also single) dad says that men are smarter and more ambitious than women, that womens' place is at home, taking care of the children and that society is broken because women are trying to do the things that men are naturally better at doing and don't want to do what they're good at.
Are you saying that the OP's mom has the opinion she has because she is aware of modern scientific understanding of gender differences? That was not the impression I got from the OP's comment.
Not to mention that there seems to be considerable scientific controversy on what this "modern scientific understanding" is -and how else could it be? Science is a debate- I doubt we can settle it by listening to what our moms and dads say.
I believe the difference between our comments is that I have never had to discard her words before; thus I'm sharing them and trying to illicit a response which is either contradicting or confirmational.
your comment:
> My (also single) dad says that men are smarter and more ambitious than women, that womens' place is at home, taking care of the children and that society is broken because women are trying to do the things that men are naturally better at doing and don't want to do what they're good at.
Men are smarter at what exactly? Mathematics?
Although the question of whether there is a gender difference in math seems like a simple one, the answer is complicated. Overall there are only small differences in boys’ and girls’ math performance; those differences depend on the age and skill level of the student, what type of math they are attempting and how big of a dissimilarity is needed to say that boys’ and girls’ math performance is truly different.
Ambitious? Again, Ambitious at what? travelling the world? starting and sustaining a family? or is it solely on what dollar amount is ascribed to an hour of your day?
A womans place is at home is about as sexist an argument I have ever heard. By that logic my "place" is running around the jungle with a spear? please don't argue such bad faith.
If I were to try to dig into what your argument actually is then I would assume you dislike my comment because it leans heavily on what my mother said.
We're I arguing in bad faith I would probably say that you're rejecting her logic so outrightly because she is a woman.
But I'm going to try to argue something else.
I'm going to ask what smart and ambitious mean mean to you.
I don't know what my dad meant by "smart" and "ambitious". I assumed he meant what most people do.
Conversely, I don't know what your mom meant by "how women think about things".
How do women think about things? I mean- according to your mom. You report her saying and seem to agree with it. Do you know what she means?
Edit: Do I really need to make it clear I disagree with my dad? I'm a woman. Is it very likely I reported here what my dad says to argue that I'm less smart and less ambitious than a man?
> How do women think about things? I mean- according to your mom. You report her saying and seem to agree with it. Do you know what she means?
I don't believe I ever argued that I understood women?
I Merely stated that on average women differ from men and that it's no less valuable- I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I believe that I know how women think.
It's genuinely impossible to know how all women think just like it's impossible to know how all _people_ think.
>> I don't believe I ever argued that I understood.
But you report her words here and you seem to agree with her. If you don't understand what she means, how can you agree with her? And why report her words if you don't know what she means?
But you say you don't understand what she means by "how women think about things". How does that line up with the fact you "clearly understood your mother's intent" and that "her words were incredibly concise and clear"?
Her exact words were “men and women are equal but different, in many ways they’re complimentary” she then explained that some men look down on women because they didn’t value how women think about things.
Those are observations from her life, I've experienced those too.
I'm dangerously close to stating common stereotypes so please take the following with good faith;
I knew a female engineer who was very good at her job (she was in networking), after having a child she discussed with her husband (also a network engineer at another company, roughly the same pay) about reducing her working hours.
He was fine with it, but he was open to also taking time off, she felt it was needed because she was the mother, purely her choice. Her manager took it graciously and put her down to 80% time.
However, one engineer resented that she was away 2-half-days a week, he ascribed values that he held to her and couldn't understand why she would want to be home with her kid instead of making more of her career.
--
a male example: I have a close personal friend who is what you would call a manly-man.
His girlfriend obviously loves him, but his girlfriends best friend is not a fan of how he's "aloof", often she considers that he is secretly plotting something or is going to cheat on her. He lacks the empathy to be "seriously deep". He might even be a psychopath; by the way she tells it anyway.
The truth is that he's just a bigger guy and he is quiet, it's different when it's just me and him but with a large group he recedes into being very quiet.
She never made much of an effort to connect with him; but she judges him based on values she has, values about being open and warm and caring and smiley.
My mother has more "anecdotes" but the way things are is that it's not statistically backed. But it's a good rule of thumb to ensure that I at least try to understand someone else's values before I judge their actions (or, non-actions).
I'm not trying to tell you what to write in your comments. What I mean is that your examples don't help me understand "how women think about things". If you could state what you mean by "how women think about things" in a few sentences then that might be more helpful. As it is now, I have no idea what your examples, are examples of.
> and neither feminism nor men’s-rights-activists seem to ascribe to those
I’m not that old yet but feminism to me growing up was always that men and women should have the same opportunities and treatment, but never that they were the same. Maybe I’m wrong but that’s more of a recent phenomenon which claimed for itself the title of feminism - I doubt the original feminists would agree with it, but I don’t know. (I find it sad because to me it’s turned a serious movement for which very brave women had to fight hard into a joke.)
The conundrum for modern feminists is that we are becoming more aware that we are becoming more aware of the power of genetic outcomes. So when equality of treatment and opportunity doesn't get all the way to equality of outcome, then more radical ideas become tempting, and science can get tossed out the window.
If some differences are caused by biological reasons, and some differences are caused by social reasons, then by removing the social reasons for inequality we achieve two things at the same time:
1) men and women become more equal;
2) the remaining reasons for inequality become predominantly biological (because the social ones are reduced, while the biological ones remain).
But it is easy to make a completely opposite conclusion, such as: "if some differences are social, then all differences have to be social". And then, when trying harder does not change things anymore, it is only a proof that we need to try even harder.
The history has informed our intuitions here. Many things used to be described as biological that we now suspect are social. And those things have been used to prevent people from doing things they wanted to do.
My take is: don't describe things as biological unless you are damn well sure that they are. We (as a society) have been wrong too many times before.
The opposite extreme -- belief in "tabula rasa", and how biology doesn't matter for the New Soviet Man -- was also used in the history, also with bad results.
(And similarly, this doesn't prove that everything is genetic. You can't get science by merely doing the opposite of other people's prejudices.)
The belief that nothing is genetic can also be used to oppress people. For example, you can dismiss highly intelligent people from poor families by insisting that high intelligence doesn't really exist and everything comes from universities, and then pointing out how poor people usually don't come from the best universities.
Any kind of incorrect belief can be strategically used to hurt someone.
I would add that truth can be used to harm as well, because even entirely rational arguments with the best intentions can lead to grave atrocities (e.g. utilitarianism).
feminism to me growing up was always that men and women should have the same opportunities and treatment, but never that they were the same
This is still true today, to a certain extent (never is a heavy word). It's important to understand that Feminism isn't some authoritarian philosophy with a single set of ideas that you must subscribe to consider yourself a Feminist. Sure, some Feminists challenge gender essentialism in one way or another, but that doesn't mean all do or that it is a critical part of Feminism. The best way to learn is to talk to some local political groups.
"(I find it sad because to me it’s turned a serious movement for which very brave women had to fight hard into a joke.)"
What you're seeing there is an effect of the internet, not an effect of shifts in feminist movements. The internet gives everyone a place to speak which is great but the loudest/most astonishing/most disruptive voices are the ones that come out on top. Not the majority, not the thoughtful, not the ones who take action, not the voices who would like to have a conversation. If you dive past the surface I don't think you'd find modern feminism a joke and think that it has grown and matured. But I'm just one opinion
I think it's important to recognize the issues directly pertaining to equal treatment that are dominating much of the conversation about sex and gender today.
The right not to be grabbed or groped or touched without consenting, to be evaluated on ability to do the work and not on appearance, to have supervisors and coworkers focused on working together and not on how to date you.
These are all issues disproportionately impacting women, that are not requests for "equality of outcome" or that men and women are the same, and very much critical to addressing "equality of opportunity".
>These are all issues disproportionately impacting women
That men are raised with the social expectation to not find problem and to not let something impact them is not to say that women are impacted more by it. With reference to non-consensual encounters, there is a great deal of bias that refuses to see men as victims and even encourages them to see being the victim as a beneficial event for them.
It would not surprise me given the pervasiveness of the double standard. I've seen a old woman directly sexually assault a young boy in public and no one call her out on it. It was treated as a joke and even I took a few moments to realize just how differently I reacted compared to if we reversed the genders. The boy played it off as a joke because that is what he was conditioned to do, and it was another incident that will never be reported in any sort of reporting.
There are also numerous self reports by bouncers in bars that point out how bad it gets and the extent of the double standard.
Or consider the case of celebrities openly admitting to such crimes of recent and the vast difference in social reaction based on the gender of the celebrity.
A non charitable reading of my quickly formulated comment may have given the impression I believe that the need for real feminism is over. I'm lamenting the appropriation of the word by those that are cheapening it with nonsense.
On the one hand we have women in Iran facing real dangers to take off their veils. Then on the other we have this strange group that deny science and demand we believe men and women are identical. I also reject this pattern where women should measure and compare themselves to men, and shape themselves into men. Which seems very anti-feminist. You're fine to do it, but to label that feminist is (I believe) wrong.
you're describing second wave feminism. It was about equal opportunities for women, regardless of any (supposed) intrinsic differences between the sexes.
What we're looking at here is a bit more complicated; the modern situation (not just feminism but a number of different position groups) wants to downplay the existence of actual differences between the sexes. This seems partly motivated by existing, bad/biased science, and partly by the worry that if women and men are physically different, that people will use that as a basis for discrimination. I do see a bit of what appears to be science denialism amongst the "there is no male brain or female brain" crowd, which I find worrisome. Ultimately, I am with the second-wave feminists: people deserve equal opportunities regardless of their differences.
>I currently hold these views and neither feminism nor men’s-rights-activists seem to ascribe to those values, at best they pay lip service to the notion that we’re (on average, and grossly generalising) complimentary.
Interesting. I've never really got the impression that Men's Rights Activists ascribe to any specific notion like that. To me the movement seems to be about shedding light on the injustices of our legal systems where men get screwed over: divorce court, custody of a child, alimony, punishments seemingly not being equal between the sexes. I guess they also have an element of fighting against social injustices such as false claims.
I might be wrong though. I might simply be seeing only the things I care about in their movement, since I see it so rarely.
If you follow the men's right movement you will notice that they regularly have to spend a small amount of time shutting down those going beyond "divorce court, custody of a child, alimony, punishments seemingly not being equal between the sexes" to those who want to put women "back in their place". Most seem to be the former, but the later does exist too and they want to join the group.
The feminist movement has their share of misandry, but society tend to ignore that minority of the movement and focus on the social issues that the movement highlight.
In the end it doesn't matter if either movement has bad apples. What matter is if we want a society that make abortion illegal or a legal system that base judgement on gender.
> I feel like it might be a cause of being a bit older but my (single) mother always said that women and men were equal in worth not aptitude.
I actually like this line a lot, because it points to several of the problems in modern society. It makes you ask the question: "on what grounds is worth judged?"
And then you realize that, without a clear way of thinking about "worth" (which is something organized religions provided), we, at least in the US, fall back on "economic value", which is determined by "aptitude". So we can pretty quickly see the philosophical pit we've fallen into: if "worth" and "aptitude" are intertwined, then the statement admits women are indeed "worth less".
I want to agree with that statement. But, there's a problem: how can we come up with a method of judging worth that doesn't rely on some sort of "over-human validator" (e.g. God)? Or alternatively, how can we come up with a broadly acceptable method of judging human worth, without falling into the pitfalls of Abrahamic religious practices?
I'm not so sure if human being should have the attribute of "worth" (I formulate it like this because "have no worth" has a different meaning). If they do, you can make ugly calculations: It's worth to kill 300 PAX to save 1000s in the skyscraper the plane is going to fly into. It's worth to kill one prisoner in interrogation because he knows where his partner might have the hostage (or two?).
Worth doesn't have to be absolute nor quantifiable. To use a mathematics analogy, you can have an ordered set without addition and subtraction, and it could even be roughly ordered so you can't tell the difference between two adjacent elements.
> I want to agree with that statement. But, there's a problem: how can we come up with a method of judging worth that doesn't rely on some sort of "over-human validator" (e.g. God)?
Our brains are pretty well built for this. Are you sure that requiring human-type validation is even avoidable at all?
> I think if you assess people's abilities individually everybody's happy.
It doesn't look like it. A lot of people in science are demanding equality of outcomes for groups (when the outcome is positive). They are well done pass asking for equality of opportunities.
Well, James Damore got fired from Google (and, apparently, blackballed out of the employment market entirely) for insinuating that Google was assessing people's abilities individually. While I think you're correct, the problem is that too many people seem to try to evaluate whether or not everybody's abilities are being assessed individually by looking at the end result rather than looking at the individuals involved.
It worked great in the West at least, the world was never as equitable and meritocratic as it is today and it is continuously progressing for better according to all factual data.
What? Really? I can think of no better thing for humanity as a species to aspire to than this.
"Do your best, help out the world, and your needs will be taken care of."
As a goal for structuring society, if that isn't in your top 2 of "things to collectively strive for," I don't think it's a very good society. I grew up on the Star Trek vision of utopia, though, and hope that some day humanity still gets there.
In addition to downvoting, I would really appreciate hearing from folks about what's a better way to structure society than "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs"; and specifically, why wouldn't you want to make sure each individual's needs in the society are met?
I don't think that's fair; it's certainly not specific, but it is a way to structure society. It's just a vague way to do it. It establishes a base minimum for what to expect from people, and what to give to people.
As for the systems associated with it, I think it's an oversimplification to say they do not work. As I mentioned, there is a not-insignificant number of people out there who long for a return to life under Soviet control (just from people I've met in my travels). To them, it worked. It wasn't perfect, but I didn't say that and nothing is. To a great degree, history is written by the victors, anyway.
Rather than play on red scare feels, I'd appreciate engaging with the idea, and again I ask: what's better than that, and what about that don't you like?
I'll even posit an alternative: personal freedom is the most important thing, even if it means people's needs aren't met.
I don't agree, because the world is resource-rich enough to ensure everyone's needs are met, so where do you draw the line? who do we say it's okay for their needs not to be met? rather than defer to an amorphous "market," I'd like to hear from you whose needs should not be met.
> As for the systems associated with it, I think it's an oversimplification to say they do not work. As I mentioned, there is a not-insignificant number of people out there who long for a return to life under Soviet control (just from people I've met in my travels). To them, it worked. It wasn't perfect, but I didn't say that and nothing is. To a great degree, history is written by the victors, anyway.
Has your life brought you in contact with any significant number of people who grew up in the Soviet system? Or are you insinuating something only by what you've read in books?
Strangest distinct memory I have of hanging with people in a post-Soviet state: partying all night long, passing out some time around 3, waking up at 5 to hearing them all singing the Soviet anthem -- not the Russian anthem, though the melody's the same -- and then talking in hushed tones the next day with some of them about life being better before the fall.
And that's just one of many conversations I've had with people about this stuff. shrug
That, because you met some people who claim to prefer Soviet rule, that Soviet rule was better for everyone?
That, because you met some people who claim to prefer Soviet rule, that no one suffered under Soviet oppression?
That, because you met some people who claim to prefer Soviet rule, that the suffering of some under Soviet oppression was acceptable?
That, because you met some people who claim to prefer Soviet rule, [insert claim here]?
Additionally, are you claiming that Solzhenitsyn's claims are false? Are you dismissing his lengthy work based on some anecdotes from hung-over all-night party-goers?
I can't rebut the comment that replied to me here, because it's dead.
But it raised a few points I do want to address.
Yes, people were oppressed under the Soviet system. American capitalism is oppressive to many, too. Ask a prisoner who can now only access books on an "allowed books" list.
No, soviet life wasn't better for everyone; American capitalism isn't better for everyone. Ask the millions who can't access health care and die prematurely for it.
Saying that "some suffered under soviet rule, therefore it is unacceptable" sets a bar of "nobody should suffer" that is unreasonably high; it is also a bar that American capitalism very distinctly fails to clear. Suffering is great in the US. Ask the homeless, ask the struggling. There's no American freedom for them, it's an empty slogan. There's only suffering for them.
My point that some prefer soviet rule is to rebut the generalization that it did not work. It didn't for many. It did for many others. American capitalism does not work for many; hence the extremism in political life. People want a change.
My point is that it's an oversimplification to say ours is good, theirs was bad, when the history and reality is much more complicated than that.
Get that Marxist shit out of here. "People want a change." You sound like Bernie Sanders. Are YOU running for President now?
I want a change: I want evil people like you to shut up and face reality.
> My point is that it's an oversimplification to say ours is good, theirs was bad, when the history and reality is much more complicated than that.
It's fucking simple: millions of people died in famines and gulags in the USSR. You have the gall to compare "people who can't access health care and die prematurely" to being DISAPPEARED, TORTURED, MURDERED, AND STARVED, INTENTIONALLY, BY A GOVERNMENT THAT CLAIMED TO BE FOR THEM.
You're a filthy, rotten, leftist liar--forgive my redundancy.
The idea of being equal in worth is interesting. How do you define it? Is it a kind of humanitarian worth? That all people are deserving of basic rights, decency and respect? Such would be the case even for handicapped or mentally challenged individuals? Or are you saying that their set of aptitudes, while not identical, sum up to an equal worth in utilitarian terms? Say, for example, taking one of the very strong stereotype, that child bearing is so useful to our societies, that it makes women as worthy as even the strongest of men and their aptitude for heavy lifting?
Now, the idea of equal aptitude is relevant as well. There's two main reasons for that. The first is that, some aptitudes, like intelligence, such as talents in mathematics, or decision making in general, has historically been thought of as inferior for women. Yet, there's never been evidence of this as far as I know. In fact, now that we admitted women in higher education, they are out outclassing men in most fields when it comes to grades. So this is a very relevant debate, because bias still exist, that a pretty young woman can't be as smart as a young man.
The other reason is the wash of the average. Lots of women are physically stronger then lots of men. Similarly, lots of men are emotionally more adept then lots of women. Thus aptitude shouldn't be characterised by gender, but it should be more individualized. This applies in some scenarios, like not giving women applicants a chance at very physical jobs. Even though some women have the necessary aptitudes.
I think the point of the article is that the science supports the fact that there are sex differences in the brain.
Ideas that the article does not propose include:
- Men are better than Women or vice versa.
- Men are better suited to X activity or job.
The point was that the science should be evidence lead and defended from ideologues regardless of your view on the broader political issues. Ideologues attempt to bend all evidence to support a pre-existing conclusion, and the politicisation of science is bad in all cases because it undermines the entire process. It's depressing that a publication such as Nature should be affected in this way.
“[the anti–sex difference contingent is] in fact advocating for biomedical research to retain its male subject–dominated status quo so disproportionately harmful to women.”
The money quote. The situation in neuroscience is pretty much the same as if in Machine Learning people would say ”You must use just white males in face recognition training”.
> And, as The Atlantic story points out, other groups have found in the past that facial recognition algorithms developed in Asia were more likely to accurately identify Asian people than white people; while algorithms developed in parts of Europe and the US were able to identify white faces better.
Maybe Wakanda can share their facial recognition tech and we can combine them all into a fair model? (Joking about the first part, obviously, and about the second part, e.g. Aboriginal Australians, Maori, etc that don't neatly fit into those three categories.)
If your ideology is that any measured sex differences in the brain should be automatically interpreted as 'innate' facts about men and women, rather than -say- the cumulative result of a combination of gene expression (including sex chromosomes), developmental biology and (in anything other than newborns) socialization, then you're still imposing an ideology on the available data.
'Blank slate theory' simply isn't what feminists are arguing; they are arguing that our society has a woefully poor record of hastily ascribing traits to a kind of biological determinism, and further claims of that type should be heavily scrutinised.
I believe at least some of the studies mentioned were dealing with rats rather than humans. I didn't read anything from the sourced article that overstepped the bounds of what could be said from the research. It seemed like all the interpretation was being done by the non-scientists.
They're not just saying they should be heavily scrutinized. At least some are saying that it's flat out bad science to acknowledge the differences, or perform research into the subject at all.
They're denying science for ideological ends. It's pretty much the same thing as conservatives with climate change. They don't like what science has to say, so they're trying to shut it down.
I'm generally pro-feminism, but no 'side' has a monopoly on bad opinions.
Observing physical differences is not imposing an ideology.
The physical differences exist today and are exhibited based on biological genders. That does not preclude that these differences are unduly influenced by environmental issues (including socialization). However denying that they exist (which is what Cahill is objecting to here) on the basis that the cause might be environmental and not "innate" just means that the ability to understand and treat neurological disorders in females decreases.
The reality is that there are differences. The cause of that reality can be complicated and nuanced and not inescapable. but as the change in societal standards is quite slow all that's happening is a disservice to an entire half of the population.
I wish more people realize that when someone proclaims equality between all the people, it is an ideal that we want to strive towards as a society. It is not a statement of nature.
It is because there are inequalities naturally, either innate or acquired, that it is necessary to state equality as a goal.
I knew someone would mention equity. I must say that, for one, I feel the need to push back against this new trend of trying to obfuscate what equality is about. Equity = equality. People who fight these notions pretended to not understand what equality is and say that equality of opportunity is what it means.
No, to any sane, empathic, person, the meaning of equality is clear: you want similar outcomes for everybody. It sounds complicated only to the people who think that a flat tax is the only fair tax. Let's not indulge to their (often voluntarily) obtuseness. In 20 years, they will pretend that equity means something else and we will have to come up with another word to express the same old concept.
You know, it took me a while to understand how well balanced the french motto was: liberty, equality, fraternity. If you lack one of these, you will corrupt the two others. If you think about equality while also keeping fraternity in mind (as in, "what would I want for my loved ones?"), then it becomes obvious that we are not talking about crap like "equality of chances" but true equality.
Equality from Oxford dictionary: The state of being equal, especially in status, rights, or opportunities.
Equality from Merriam-Webster dictionary: the quality or state of being equal; the quality or state of having the same rights, social status, etc.
French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: Article I – Men are born and remain free and equal in rights (highlight mine). Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.
BTW - I come from a country with a communist history and the result of enforcing equality of outcome is indeed equality as you understand it i.e. almost everyone was equally poor. Some people actually feel genuinely sentimental about it. For example, a bubble gum or coca cola bought from capitalist shop with hard to come by dollars had to feel special. My mother often tells my a story how she enjoyed coca cola when visiting West. In general, my parents were really appreciating being able to eat oranges or bananas basically once a year for Christmas. Now, in capitalism it's an everyday thing and doesn't feel special anymore.
True equality of outcome is where no one’s outsized effort can produce an outsized return.
This is not obvious to “any sane empathic person” in fact it seems quite controversial and would seem to involve a terrifying level of government control in each and everyone’s lives and livelihood.
The natural consequences of equality of outcome have already been nicely summed up in this piece of literature.
"the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic."
Not-so-child-nursery-rhyme from behind the Iron Curtain, in a world fraught with terrifying levels of government control. The translation loses the childish rhythm, for which I apologize:
Those who are diligent and hardworking have everything they want,
Those who are lazy and absent from work have it all the same.
Before imagining some dystopia where government impose the same lunch menu to everybody, start by imagining a government that would fund healthcare enough so that life expectancy could be unrelated to parents' income. That would be a fucking good start.
Could you explain more why you think absolute equality of outcome should be a goal for humanity? I understand and support the argument that we should not penalise people for being unfortunate enough to be born in less advantaged circumstances, through nationality, parental resources or genetic abilities.
However it seems unreasonable for example to seek equal outcomes between person A who spends their time studying (deferring gratification) and person B who spends their time in leisure activities. Or person A who saves for retirement and person B who spends all the money.
This is not from a moral perspective, but just in terms of how we wish to incentivise behaviour.
Why do you read "absolute equality of outcome" when I write "similar outcomes"? That's called a strawman.
When in doubt, just wonder how to balance liberty, equality, fraternity. Do you want to reward kids who study well? I bet. Do you want adults dying on the street for their choices when they were 10 year old? Maybe not.
And this is exactly a moral perspective: you are deciding who deserves what. You may argue that from a practical perspective we can't give equal outcomes to everybody, and I agree with that. Which is why my first message emphasizes the fact that this is a goal, an objective to strive toward.
Inequalities and the desire to get more are what fuels our society today, so as long as we have the current organization, we will have some amount of that. The moral choices of making equality a worthwhile goal says that we still want to minimize inequalities as much as possible.
I'm well aware that in some cases, bigger/better outcomes accrue to particular people/groups in ways that are unfair, unjust or corrupt.
I'm completely in favour of efforts and systems that seek to overcome said unfairness/injustice/corruption.
At the same time, in a well-functioning economy, higher levels of responsibility, expectation and pressure will accrue to those with higher levels of capability in any given domain. E.g., the more capable and experienced the surgeon, the more difficult and risky the surgical operations that will be assigned to them.
With that increased level of responsibility, expectation and pressure, will come greater benefits - whether financial remuneration, social/political status/influence, resources to manage/invest/allocate, etc. Though that also carries with it even more responsibility, expectation and pressure.
Of course, plenty of people are content to live a modest life, with neither high levels of responsibility, expectation and pressure, nor high levels of financial remuneration, social/political status/influence etc.
That's a perfectly reasonable trade-off.
I'm interested in your take on how the reality should be any different to this.
That is, what's your suggestion for how an economy can function well, in which everyone ends up with the same level of remuneration, status and influence, whilst making vastly different contributions to society and living with vastly different levels of responsibility, expectation and pressure?
> No, to any sane, empathic, person, the meaning of equality is clear: you want similar outcomes for everybody.
Have you read Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron? Wanting similar outcomes for everybody is pretty much the diametric opposite of sane. It fails to acknowledge the statistical spread of abilities even within a protected category, let alone any that might exist between them.
Yes, as a kid. I found it an interesting caricature. I am now discovering in awe, as you are the second person mentioning that, that some people actually take it for a serious criticism of the very notion of equality.
That's not even an exaggeration of the position you are attacking, that's a wilful misrepresentation.
Fables often exaggerate in order to drive their moral lesson home, that's hardly a point against Harrison Bergeron. And to be precise, it's not a criticism of equality, it's a criticism of the "equal outcomes" school of thought.
You can't have equality of outcome without removing the ability of an individual's choices to influence their outcome, aka freedom. Therefore "equity" is a fundamentally anti-liberty concept.
It may be likely - but it is not a logical necessity: there can be large structural differences between functionally equivalent things (artificial, engineered example: like a C64 computer and a C64 emulator)
Being suited to a job is a combination of hundreds of factors e.g. experience, temperament, social skills, personality type. And those factors do not necessarily correlate with gender.
So ignoring all of those factors and just focusing on gender is illogical. Especially given that men/women are not all uniform and exhibit wildly different personality and behavioural traits.
It really depends on the job, doesn't it? If the job is, for example, a dock worker physically lifting heavy crates / boxes all day, is it unreasonable to expect there to be a gender bias in hiring for that position? How about a bouncer at a bar?
If two things are different, and they are a large number of functions. Chances are that they will be functions where thing A is better than thing B, and many where thing B is better than A.
The key to understand and talk about this is to use the term "on average" a lot.
The best non controversial example is height. As we all know, men are on average taller than women. As we also know, that doesn't mean every man is taller than every woman. If you're a man, there is almost certainly a taller woman out there, if you're a woman, there is surely a shorter man.
So if there is a job where height is an advantage, there are two stupid ways to approach this. (A) Since men are taller, only men should be allowed to do the job, (B) Since any gender can have any height, gender distribution in this job must be 50/50.
I claim the right answer is (C), let everyone who is qualified (by height) do the job, and don't be surprised or offended when there is a 80/20 distribution in that work force.
I guess there is also a (D), which would be, to make it so that most people regardless of height could do that job. There could be a simple or cheap way to enable shorter people to perform as well. In that case, you could greatly expand your available workforce. If there isn't an easy way to do that then you can fallback to (C).
I agree, but after some time I started wondering: What happens if the employers measurement of quality (height) has an uncertainty? If the employer has two candidates very close together, using Bayesian statistics, the employer must conclude that the male (for height) is more likely to be better, because there are more men that are this tall than women. I think this is "fair" for the employer to do, as their goal is to hire the best person. But obviously it's unfair to the tall woman.
A serious problem is that in 99.9% of things that you study in the brain, there will be no sex difference. However, every researcher records sex information in the data they collect. So even if there isn't a scientific reason to think there might be a sex difference in whatever you are studying, you might as well test it because it is zero extra effort. That means that about 1/20 studies will show an effect with $p<.05$.
What you are stating is factually at odds with TFA, and your example of tracking sex in research studies is interesting because the NIH tweets:
Sex can influence health & disease in many ways, which is why NIH requires that researchers consider sex as a biological variable (SABV) in all stages of research: http://bit.ly/2KXGL7k
It's not zero extra effort. If you want to maintain your statistical power for both male and female, that means doubling your sample size. And it's unlikely that they'll be identical 99.9% of the time. The article suggests that we'd see frequent, small differences, but there haven't been enough studies of this type to know for certain.
"there are people on this campus in the Gender Studies Department who use books by one of these ideologues and literally have classes basically saying that what I’m saying is wrong."
Q1. What purpose does a Gender Studies Department serve.
Q2. Why are its teachings based not on science, but apparently on the opposite?
1) Gender Studies is about the discussion of gender. And the purpose is to satisfy the needs of students who want to learn about it. No different to studying art, computers, music.
2) It's not based on the opposite. It's based on a superset of factors of which science is just one. We don't interact with other people according to purely scientific algorithms and so dealing with the emotional, political and philosophical aspects are equally as important as the scientific.
Are you claiming that the emotional, political and philosophical interactions of humans can not be evaluated scientifically?
If the scientific process does not apply to Gender Studies, that's fine I suppose, it can be considered part of the arts. However, it would be an error to then consider forming policy based on it - similar to forming policy based on music or painting.
In order for us to make policy decisions or recommendations, there needs to be academic rigor, otherwise we may as well be a theocracy.
I know you didn't directly bring up anything about forming policy, so those points aren't necessarily directed at you. I bring them up because I see a lot of material from the field of Gender Studies being used to form policy, law and social expectations.
I think the article misrepresents the feminist position a bit. When they protest the study of "sex differences", it's not (usually) in a flat-earth or creationist sense of literally denying the science and claiming a-priori that all brains are identical.
Rather, they are observing that the notion of one sex being biologically "superior" (or at least more suitable for high-prestige roles) has a long and oppressive history in our society, and that incautious "research" can be used to bolster types of sexism that we had hoped were behind us. Indeed, we see this happening on this very site all the time, whenever the topic comes up.
It's not that sex differences might not exist. It's that the instant you publish anything on the the topic, conservatives will inevitably and immediately latch onto it as proof that the traditional gender roles have been correct all along. Even if that's not what the studies show (and there's actually no reason to think they would, as the article points out.)
Basically, the point of feminists is that society is so fraught on this issue, and there's so much latent bias, that it is extremely difficult to perform research objectively, let alone have it be received objectively and proportionately by an audience outside the field.
Kind of like the not so latent bias you have against conservatives? Where is the conservative movement to keep women out of industry? What conservative of any importance says women aren't qualified to be scientists, doctors, lawyers or presidents?
Saying conservatives support sexist gender roles is like saying liberals support anti-vaxxers - wrong.
>society is so fraught on this issue, and there's so much latent bias, that it is extremely difficult to perform research objectively
That's exactly what global warming skeptics say, along with every conservative that doesn't support one of the non-conservative positions that is associated with science. This is not to say who is right in their accusations, just that it's the same accusation. If you want to disagree with "The Scientific Consensus (TM)" but can't do it on scientific grounds, that claim is automatically the option you have to go with. Of course, it may also be true in some cases.
It might be an accusation of the same form, but both the nature of the claimed bias and the potential ramifications of getting it wrong couldn't be more different.
That some people will use scientific knowledge for bad ends is not a reason to avoid knowledge.
> Basically, the point of feminists is that society is so fraught on this issue, and there's so much latent bias, that it is extremely difficult to perform research objectively
What does this even mean? Do you think the subject of this article is just unavoidably biased and thus should stop researching? Should people in very obviously left- or right-leaning fields just pack up and quit doing anything? Bye-bye gender studies, I guess?
> let alone have it be received objectively and proportionately by an audience outside the field.
So because some people will twist research for their own ends, we're just what, better off not knowing?
I think it's outright laughable that a "sex difference in the hippocampal synapse" is going to lead to undermine the basic civil rights we've established.
And if you're so afraid of silly talking-heads alleging something that you hold your science back by decades then I think you're actually giving more power to those talking heads.
Finally, denying the objectively true as opposed to saying "Sex differences exist but we don't like to talk about them" makes you the dishonest side and pushes people like me to the other side.
If that's the point of feminists then feminists are a danger to research, science and society. You are essentially arguing empirical biological research is impossible.
How about scientists do the research and feminists and conservatives can argue about the conclusions? Some conservatives twist science for their ends, but so do feminists. Not sure why you are just blaming one side.
I can't believe someone is actually justifying banning research.
It just seems like feminists ( a small vocal minority of feminists ) don't want research because the facts will probably go against their political ideology. If they thought the research would support their bias, I suspect feminists would be supporting it.
Your argument reminds me of christian conservatives demanding end to archeological research because facts that researchers dig up might conflict with their worldview.
He isn't just doing research and let the conservatives vs feminists argue by themselves. The article makes this quite obvious by him choosing a specific platform and ranting against feminists over and over again. It's ridiculous how people will argue they "just present facts" while doing so.
But there is another options over the apparently impossible goal of researchers being 100% neutral: Everyone acting responsible.
Like Nature not screwing up with this apparently shitty article. Or him Cahill not going to a heavily slanted platform to push his message. And yes, for a lot of researchers that means publishing their findings in a way that makes it harder for motivated actors to abuse it. I understand this is additional work, and likely not fun kind. But especially on currently "hot" topics, this will help us all. Just like we in software should actively try to avoid building the tools necessary for a dystopian future.
The problem is that many of these motivated actors are in academia. Think about the cases we've heard about somebody in academia being accused of sexism because they didn't kowtow to the values the types of feminists hold that Cahill mentions. A mathematics paper caused an uproar because somebody tried to show that it's mathematically possible for sex differences to appear
On that note, your software development comparison is apt: there are people in software development who explicitly want to build tools that lead towards a dystopia. They just believe it won't be a dystopia.
> A mathematics paper caused an uproar because somebody tried to show that it's mathematically possible for sex differences to appear
That sounds indeed like a motivated actor. I'm not familiar with such a case, so lets keep it at that joke response.
> The problem is that many of these motivated actors are in academia.
Science and academia are part of society and thus will always have to some degree follow norms. To think the process of gaining knowledge can be perfectly separated is naive. Resources are limited, so we don't want to support crap science. Attention is limited, so the same is true for magazines. As such, it cannot be avoided to reflect the highly divided political sphere to some degree in science. Trying to minimize this seems good. But the author seems quite fine with getting the outside involved, since he expect it to help him for now.
That would indeed be problematic, but is not what happened here. To quote the article:
> Meghan Daum: Why did you choose to publish in Quillette?
> Larry Cahill: Because the editor asked me. [Others] didn’t ask me. When I contacted Nature saying I felt they needed to do something to undo the damage they had done with that review, they did say I could submit a letter to the editor, but I chose not to do that. But when [Quillette editor Claire Lehmann] asked me to write a piece, I said sure.
I had that particular line in mind when I wrote my comment, and I stand by my statement. The most that Nature offered was to maybe publish a letter to the editor. A letter to the editor is not the same as an article in the same publication.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Nature offer the letter because it is the standard way to respond in such situations?
I didn't read this as them denying to publish something more extensive because of the topic. They obviously didn't go far beyond that & help him create it, but I'd not expect them to. I do expect this to be something the ideological opposition would do further their agenda. And all I want is people to take responsibility and resist such a deal, unless they actually of what that group stands for. Don't make a deal with the devil. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Nature offer the letter because it is the standard way to respond in such situations?
Standard? Probably. Sufficient? Likely not.
Accepting a letter to the editor would give Cahill a platform to share his disagreement, without Nature having to actually admit error or fault. I think that an error like this probably should require some sort of acknowledgement from the original article's authors and/or the editorial staff.
> Don't make a deal with the devil. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.
Every comment supporting censorship here is just restating the pro-authoritarian censorship rhetoric. Not a single comment on Cahill's points or research.
Cahill, his platform he publishes on and everyone else is allowed to be biased. Just like feminists and the publications they use are allowed to be biased. For every person who thinks Cahill is dangerous, a lot more think feminists are dangerous. But I wouldn't support silencing feminists, just like I wouldn't support silencing Cahill and stopping scientific research.
If you don't like someone's research or position, then show where the research went wrong. As I said, people tend to support censorship ( especially in research and academia ) when facts and reality go against their worldview. This is true whether it is religious conservatives or feminists.
As for software development, the industry should be politically and ethically amoral. There is nothing ethical or unethical about software. No more than hammer makers are ethical or unethical.
The dyspotian future is being created by authoritarian feminists who want to politicize and censor everything from social media to scientific research. That's what I feel we should be worried about.
I can imagine where you're coming from and doubt we'd have much of a fruitful conversation, so I'll focus only on your first part:
> Every comment supporting censorship here is just restating the pro-authoritarian censorship rhetoric. Not a single comment on Cahill's points or research.
Let me repeat: I'm indeed not familiar with Cahill's work beyond this article. The article seems mostly fine, but appears to used by motivated actors to push an agenda. I advocate for people resisting against the latter part. We should generally, within reason, try to be aware what effects we have on society and should try to only change it for the better. Our free society requires a high degree of cooperation and will have a hard time to continue to exist without stuff like that. And would probably be replaced by something more authoritarian.
Thus I find you calling this "pro-authoritarian censorship rhetoric" kinda funny. Are you call it "pro-authoritarian cleanliness rhetoric" when Dr. Peterson advocates for people to "clean their room"? Or is this just a derogatory reaction against something you disagree with?
You are correct about the feminist motivation, but did you read the review in Nature that really prompted Cahill's response? It is very much a feminist flat earth moment, and is as anti-science and politically motivated as much of the anti-climate science.
modern neuroscientists have identified no decisive, category-defining differences between the brains of men and women.
I have not read the book being reviewed, but I don't see any radical or ideological claims in the review. The main claims of the review appear to be:
1. Articles have been published which claim to identify male-female brain differences.
2. Citing a few specific examples and claiming that the book delves into more, these articles are typically wrong due to innumeracy, bad designs, lack of power, etc. I assume good faith that the criticisms she identifies of the studies in particular are reasonable, mainly because the kind of innumeracy and power issues she identifies plagues all the research I read in other fields and I have no reason to believe quant training or publishing incentives differ materially in neuroscience.
3. Without saying the articles are sexist, the conclusions drawn from the articles have demonstrably been sexist in the past (i.e. moving from claimed differences in grey matter to generalizations about women's aptitude in mathematics)
4. Because we're fairly good at no longer saying women are worse than men biologically, we now say women are different than men biologically. The studies that report this have, according to the reviewer's summary of the book, similar problems.
5. If we assume that the research on biology is incorrect, how do we square that with apparent differences between men and women? Cultural arguments, for which studies are cited.
Again, it is quite possible I am missing the anti-science backdrop of this debate that you seem to be familiar with, but the article you linked does not exhibit those kinds of qualities. It is of typical quality for a review article. The claims made that are heterodox to "mainstream" thinking appear to be grounded in criticisms of science from within science. When I say "much of social psychology is wrong", it's not because I'm an anti-science Freudian or whatever, it's because I'm a scientist and I'm numerate and I know much of social psychology is wrong due to analysis errors, researcher degrees of freedom, fraud, file drawer problems, publication bias, etc. I mean, probably the most direct claim examined in the review article is the reviewer claiming a relevant study found one thing and a subsequent, better-powered meta-analysis found the opposite thing. This is not an anti-science howl, it's literally what we want scientists to do.
Do you think you could do a better job of highlighting the ways in which you feel the article reflects a "flat earth movement"? Again, I'm at a disadvantage here because I haven't read the book being reviewed, but since you have, evidence from the book would be useful too.
I mention this because the Medium article we're all replying to seems to provide... uh... exactly zero references to studies, numeracy, good scientific practice, etc. It seems mostly founded on incredulity that anyone would make the claim you pull-quoted -- actually, even worse, it seems mostly incredulous about the TITLE of the Nature piece. It talks about Gender Studies, and culture war; it repeatedly mentions Quilette but I don't see the mention of any scientific journal after the Nature review piece. He does cite his own experience from all the studying he did.
One of the claims about Gender Studies is that methodologically it, like many cultural studies programs, elevates lived experiences over empiricism. If you're an empiricism, this is scary. But the Medium article has the professor claiming that he knows differences are obvious because he's seen them himself, and so the article which actually discusses empirical results must be wrong...
The Medium article is a secondary source here for both the Nature article and the book, and its refutation by Cahill. If you're looking at the article directly, you should probably be looking at the refutation, as well - they link to it from the article.
I agree with this. In addition, Larry Cahill puts up some ridiculous strawmen: "But also stay away from the ideologues on the other side, who unfortunately are given a voice by editors at places like the New York Times, who know nothing about the issue except that they’re afraid of appearing to be on the wrong side of it.", "It’s just that I’ve been drawn into this now by having to deal with this small but ridiculous vocal group of ideologues, and I feel an obligation to not let them get away with utterly misrepresenting or even vilifying my science."
He is misrepresenting the Feminist's position just as much as he is claiming that they are misrepresenting science. Feminism has become the right's new Bogeyman.
If you read the article, you'd see a linked NYT article whose authors clearly have no interest in further discussing potential physiological differences between the sex's brains.
Cahill does not mention feminism or feminists at any point, either in the Medium article, or in his review that it links to. You can certainly choose to interpret "ideologues" in this broad way, but that is a very uncharitable (for feminism) reading.
"You might think _they’d_ be protesting outside my door. They are not. I teach a class here called Sex Differences in the Brain. It has a max of 60 people, and it’s enrolled about to the max. My students come out of the class going, “Wow, I had no idea about this stuff!” I point out to them that there are people on this campus in the Gender Studies Department who use books by one of these ideologues and literally have classes basically saying that what I’m saying is wrong."
It is blatantly obvious what he means by "ideologues".
Well, it seems clear that what he has a problem with is not "feminists" but people who actually promote junk science, either in parts of academia or on the media. It's the difference between saying "conservatives are anti-science" and stating the same thing about creationists or climate-change denialists.
And as a consequence, gender scientist refuse to address or even comment on conclusions of studies in other fields. Instead they prescribe implementing their methods and observing the outcome as the only way of performing experiments. So in a very practical sense, they are experimenting with society at large rather than with their research subjects. It's very nonscientific and dangerous practice.
> Cahill, a professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California at Irvine, is considered one of the world’s leading researchers on the influence of biological sex.
I mean, he doesn't sound like a crank, and he's also written for Scientific American. Does that mean he's acceptable after all?
This was the takeaway for me from this interesting interview:
"Q: Is there a battle between actual scientists and science journalists who may be in thrall to a progressive or woke ideology?
A: No, because most scientists are blissfully unaware..."
As long as scientists stay away from these discussions, the field will be left to "ideologues" as Cahill calls them, i.e. people who either have little knowledge of the subject they're discussing or else have such a strong agenda that it strongly biases their views and prior probabilities.
Calling those who disagree with you "ideologues" is not a great way of debating. The op-ed he was railing against was written by two professors, one in neuroscience and the other in history and the philosophy of science. The book review he also criticized was written by a professor of neuroscience. There is little evidence for that these people deserve to be called "ideologues".
His review claims that the book cites numerous already-debunked studies while ignoring large swaths of research that contradicts its thesis, which is hard to square with a scientific approach regardless of author's credentials. Which is to say, one can be a scientist and an ideologue at the same time.
Of course, so can Cahill. But is there similar evidence that he cherry-picks studies to arrive at predetermined conclusions (not a rhetorical question; genuinely curious)?
Yes, his review is scathing. "I started to laugh in the methods section. The authors constructed their key measure (called “internal consistency”) to make it essentially impossible for them to not get the results they got. Or put another way, the study was basically rigged (although not necessarily consciously so), as subsequently shown by three other groups also published in PNAS." So he accuses those he disagrees with of having committed science fraud. Not only that, this fraudulent science has passed peer review and been published in PNAS. It is odd that it has not been retracted if it was so laughable as Cahill claims!
He also claims that these "ideologues" have such a strong grip on academia that they will destroy your career if you oppose them: "Senior colleagues warned me as an untenured professor around the year 2000 that studying sex differences would be career suicide." It is smearing, which he offers no evidence for, hoping that the readership will already "know" it is true. Maybe he is right, maybe he is not, I can't tell. If he is right then I hope more neuroscientists speak up about the bullying and that journals like PNAS stops publishing junk science.
I don't think he's claiming that the study is outright fraudulent, but rather that the data in it cannot be summarized simply as "male and female brains cannot be easily distinguished" without using faulty methodology to analyse it. The accuracy of the data itself is not disputed, so the study is still valuable for that reason alone.
Indeed, one of the other studies that he cites in support of his claims used that same data to deconstruct the model. And it really does seem to be as blatantly fudged as he claims:
"Via simulations, we systematically varied sample characteristics such as the magnitude of sex differences and correlations among variables. Some of the simulated scenarios were intentionally unrealistic, involving uniformly strong sexual dimorphism and/or extremely high correlations between variables (up to r = 0.90). Despite this, the proportion of “internally consistent” profiles remained low in all conditions. ... To further reinforce this point, we applied Joel et al.’s methods to facial morphology features in three species of monkeys (crab-eating macaques, grivets, and tufted capuchins). Our goal was to see what percent of individual monkeys would display internally consistent species-typical profiles of features. Across comparisons, only 1.1–5.1% of the monkeys showed consistent “species-typical” profiles ..."
If differing hormones lead to different brains why can’t different roles in society lead to different brains? How is it possible to differentiate the two effects?
You could compare different societies, for example Saudi Arabia and Sweden. If some gender differences remain, it is still not certainty, but it is quite likely that they are caused by some brain chemistry.
(Unless you believe that Sweden is just as patriarchal as Saudi Arabia, in which case I guess there is no argument that could possibly convince you.)
Another possible approach is to examine what happens to transgender people after they start taking hormones.
>> No one seems to have a problem accepting that, on average, male and female
bodies differ in many, many ways. Why is it surprising or unacceptable that
this is true for the part of our body that we call “brain”?
Because the differences between male and female "bodies", meaning anatomical
differences like sex characteristics, are obvious and self-evident, while
differences in brain structure are not and therefore require careful study.
Further, because there are well-known and deeply entrenched cultural biases
that risk derailing this careful study and therefore any initial assumptions
that coincide with these cultural biases must be eliminated before serious
work can begin.
Finally, because any result that just so happens, completely by chance, and
despite the scientists' best effort, to agree with preconceived notions about
"how things are" should be considered extremely suspicious and scrutinised
again, and again, and again, and again, and noone who really wants to
understand the relevant subjects should feel comfortable accepting such
results as settled, much less defend them as "scientific orthodoxy".
In other words, because "bias" is as much a problem in science as it is in
society, and because in the science of sex differences it is doubly so.
And just to show how complicated science in general is, your thinking is another example of bias. Requiring a higher burden of proof for findings that someone might be uncomfortable with is bad science. The burden of proof must be equally high for everyone.
The real problem here isn't the science, is the pseudo-science and the journalism. It's pretty common for people to take single studies out of context and act as if their cherry picked study is the final word. Science journalists are supposed to bridge the gap between experts and laymen, but there seems to be very few good science journalists, and there seems to be lots of hacks and conmen.
>> Requiring a higher burden of proof for findings that someone might be uncomfortable with is bad science.
That is not my comment. My comment claims that cultural bias can influence the result of scientific studies and we must be vigilant not to let this happen.
Didn’t you say that one result as opposed to the other should be considered extremely suspicious and looked at again multiple times? Should the opposite result also be viewed this way?
I think what they are arguing is that, YOU are feeling uncomfortable with one of the results, and thus are biased toward exploring it more than the other which validates your views. You here are showing that bias again by saying that because the opposite coincides with commonly held preconceptions, it should be taken without as much scrutiny. If this isn't what you meant I apologize but that sure seems to be what you are saying.
It's very unpleasant to take part in an online conversation only for people to try to psychoanalyse you and discern hidden motives in your comments.
My comment says what I meant to say. What it doesn't say, I didn't mean to say on the subject. Responses to what I didn't say are none of my business and I won't bother with them any more.
> Does the opposite result coincide with a commonly held preconception?
The only reasonable answer is "It doesn't matter." As long as the result is reproducible, coinciding with commonly held preconceptions or not is of no relevance whatsoever. All results need to be equally validated for reproducibility.
It is, but the scientific method is the best we have to eliminate bias. If the study design is sound and the results reproduce it is a fact. Now it may well be the study design is biased, but since it is documented anyone who sees a new bias is welcome to design a new study that eliminates that (I write this as if doing a scientific study is easy, in the real world it isn't but I'll ignore that real objection). There are also interesting meta-studies that eliminate some bias.
> Does the opposite result coincide with a commonly held preconception?
Why should the result that goes against the commonly held preconception be under greater scrutiny? If any difference would exist in scrutiny, it should obviously ask more from a result that goes against the general preconception.
"Requiring a higher burden of proof for findings that someone might be uncomfortable with is bad science. The burden of proof must be equally high for everyone."
If the burden of proof is set at the level in which a statement can be made such that there is evidence that cannot be explained by other phenomena then both of you can be correct.
(TBH I don't agree that one level of skepticism should be warranted for all things. If someone claimed P=NP my expectations are significantly higher than if someone claimed that HN commentors primarily comment in English.)
I agree that some things would require more evidence, but it's problematic when that is applied simply because they results are inconvenient in one way or another, and when it keeps being applied so the results never have to be acknowledged. Look at climate change. People are far to willing to discount information that is at odds with their preconception of the world. To differing degrees, this is a problem on both sides.
"... it's problematic when that is applied simply because they results are inconvenient in one way or another..."
IMO the problem is that it's not 'simply' because the results are inconvenient in one way or another. That seems like a rather handwavy or dismissing cognitive understanding of what the person is saying. In their perception it is because a given conclusion has a known and studied bias- this isn't particularly simple, nor is it about inconvenience. It is that the evidence provided may have caveats that have also been studied that would skew the evidence to be explained by other factors.
This is similar to the claim about the convtroversies behind global warming or antivax, except the amount of evidence is overwhelming such that the scientific consensus of possible skew is extremely low. I don't know (and have not heavily researched) if brain architecture and gender identity and human behavior (as a trifecta) have the same amount of evidence (I was under the impression that the technology to study the brain architecture is new enough that the research hasn't been wholly settled- if this is incorrect let me know).
The problem with making statements on tangential points on a charged topic is that everyone will reinterpret it to apply specifically towards points it wasn't intended to. :/
I wasn't using "simply" to say that explains all objections, I was saying of the objections we should be wary of ones that might be because of confirmation bias, and how that can sometimes lead to apparent lack of consensus where there is one.
That is, if you take the calls for additional scrutiny and filter them to account for confirmation bias, we should consider that outcome as well as how thorough the study was when deciding how much additional confirming reports are required to start considering the results worth mentioning. Surely, if it goes against the common knowledge of a large percentage of the population, that's reason enough to follow up in detail, but we should not shy away from the truth because it is inconvenient, whatever it may be. At to be perfectly clear, this isn't some veiled statement about topics here, it's a general statement about the utility of science and how we can use it effectively to better ourselves.
Please inform me where I've misinterpreted your phrasing. I am responding to you assuming you intend for best-faith discussion but may be misunderstanding the person you are responding to if you are concluding it is one of "simply" and "inconvenience", the second word you used again to describe the position.
I'm not always neurotypical in my understanding so please clarify if I'm misunderstanding you: Is your position not that you believe the poster is creating an unfair framework of skepticism on how convenient evidence is?
> the second word you used again to describe the position.
I didn't describe "the" position, or any single position. That seems to be the crux of misinterpreting my comment.
I should have included it in the reply, but I was responding specifically to the idea, in semi-isolation, of "TBH I don't agree that one level of skepticism should be warranted for all things." and how we should be careful that we don't allow it to go to the other extreme, as (it has for some subset of people) in the example I gave.
> Is your position not that you believe the poster is creating an unfair framework of skepticism on how convenient evidence is?
My point, as it often is, since I find some themes cause me to comment over and over, is that both the extremes of a spectrum are often unappealing but in different ways, and a middle ground is often best. While applying the exact same level of scrutiny to all things isn't useful or efficient, neither is allowing political, economic and cultural narratives to the degree that we never accept results that are "inconvenient" in that they run counter to those narratives. The example given was one where it is inconvenient politically and economically to accept the results of man made climate change. Culturally, that could be results on the effects of marriage, or religion, or lack of religion.
My statement should have been interpreted as a refinement on a specific point, not necessarily supporting or refuting anything absolutely.
I think you've made the mistake of thinking that since I commented commented downthread from your comment, it necessarily applies directly for or against your comment.
I chose the word inconvenient on purpose, to encompass results that are against someone's economic interest as well as those against their specific views on a topic.
It's meant as a general statement about the idea of requiring more or less evidence for specific results, and where I think we should be wary of this going awry.
Because I was making a tangential point that had little to do directly with the original comment (if by original you mean your top level one). I was responding specifically to "TBH I don't agree that one level of skepticism should be warranted for all things." as I just wanted to flush out that that concept a bit more. Usually, I quote what I'm responding to, but I was on my phone earlier, and the inconvenience that causes sometimes outweighs my desire to do so for the sake of clarity.
You may note that I clearly steered my example away from the topic at hand to avoid getting it tied up in a topic that I think is contentious because it affects people's personal interpretation of themselves. I did so by steering it to another charged topic, but one a little less tied to an individual and one that has numerous examples of very thorough science. I'm not sure why I chose inconvenient specifically, other than it encapsulated colloquially what I was trying to express. It's been used for the same purpose previously, and famously so, in "An inconvenient truth", so perhaps that affected my choice.
I get the feeling you really want me to apply the word inconvenient towards the topic at hand and your statement in some way. Honestly, since your comment is mostly about making sure we take it carefully and really understand it, I'm not sure I have a useful way to apply it without being ham-fisted and forcing it, which I would prefer not to do. If I had to apply it towards the topic of cognitive differences between the sexes (or even the races), I would say it applies only inasmuch as if the science disagrees with (or as you state, conveniently agrees with) the popular narratives, we should still look at them closely and follow the science, but we should be careful not to let our preconceptions steer us from changing our view little by little and more evidence comes in. I seriously doubt any neurological differences amount to much in comparison to natural variation and environmental factors, but I also don't think it's fair of me to prevent future people from having a better understanding of how, in general, their neurological processes might differ from other people in positive and negative ways in multiple different aspects, and how to take advantage of or mitigate them as needed.
As an example of this, my oldest daughter has ADHD. In her junior year of high school, she's finally learning techniques to mitigate the problems this causes for her (as well as the benefits), Having an explanation and template for her behavior and how we should interpret it was invaluable to us. It's not perfect (what template could be when applied to an individual?), but it did help us all channel our frustrations into useful life strategies, as parents and for her as a child. If an area of research that yields better understanding of our minds overall hampered because of our inability as a society to accept where it conflicts with our ideas of equality (as weirdly disjointed and unevenly applied as those are), then I think we are all worse off for it.
I think the real problem is that people keep throwing around the word "average" which is insufficient to explain the data. To properly understand what's going on, you need to know both the mean and the standard deviation (the central limit theorem helps with the distribution).
Men and women can have an identical mean across a large number of traits but if the standard deviation is not the same then we can expect large differences at the extremes. This is in fact what we see. Boys' and girls' mathematics scores are pretty much identical at the mean but boys have a slightly higher standard deviation. Boys are thus overrepresented in the 1st and 99th percentiles of mathematical ability.
I think the other problem is that we as society only want to look up, never down. Many feminists demand that we equalize the representation of the sexes in all of the high-paying, intellectual fields (engineering, management, finance) but never in the dirtiest, most dangerous, outdoor fields (mining, logging, fishing, trash collecting) where men are similarly overrepresented.
I’m sure you can find examples of nearly anything, but that last part really isn’t an accurate portrayal of what many/most feminists are saying. Their claim is more that a) women have unequal access/opportunity in high status jobs, and b) that lower status jobs are gendered in a way that systematic rewards women less... contra your claim, feminist thinkers as a whole spend a lot of time focusing on looking around/down, to use your metaphor.
Regardless of the accuracy - and I definitely have questions about some of the thinking that comes out of that that space - I think it's important to address the arguments people are actually making, rather than others characterizations of those arguments.
Something to consider is that when you look down, the bottom is not low status jobs. It is living on the streets, prisons, and mental institutions (prisons have largely supplanted these, at least in the US).
The idea that our social institutions systematically favor/reward men over women seems to be contradicted by the fact that men are also disproportionately represented at the absolute bottom of the social hierarchy.
It does not necessarily disprove the hypothesis of systematic sexism, but it is an observation which requires explanation.
Oh, gotcha - that is one of those things that seems superficially contradictory but isn't. But it does need discussion. I'm no expert on feminism but most of what I've heard [people who've though a lot more about this than I have] say/write on the subject acknowledges this as one (of many) aspects in which our society treats people unequally in gendered ways. Perhaps unsatisfying, but they also tend to view it as not their principal priority to fix; which I guess is fair.
For completeness, I would add the "welfare trap" to SkyBelows list, which then pulls in a lot of women. The "bottom" here is not a very comfortable place to look, and involves a sad stories from many different directions. I think one of the ways it reflects in a gendered way is that for men at the lower margins we (i.e. "society") are more likely to say 'you are on your own, deal with it yourself' and for women more likely to say 'we know better, here is what you are going to do'.
> I'm not nobodies expert on feminism but most of what I've heard [people who've though a lot more about this than I have] say/write on the subject acknowledges this as one (of many) aspects in which our society treats people unequally in gendered ways.
I recognize that you are in some sense just the messenger here, but I will just point out that this response appears to use a form of equivocation. Saying that society merely treats people (of both sexes) unequally in gendered ways is not the same as saying that society favors men over women.
This kind of equivocation is what is called a Motte and Bailey[0].
> Perhaps unsatisfying, but they also tend to view it as not their principal priority to fix; which I guess is fair.
Aside from the logical error, I don't mind that they their priority isn't helping disenfranchised men. Indeed, an important requirement to effectively helping people is to keep your scope narrow.
> For completeness, I would add the "welfare trap" to SkyBelows list, which then pulls in a lot of women.
Totally fair.
> The "bottom" here is not a very comfortable place to look, and involves a sad stories from many different directions.
I didn't present it well - though I'm not convinced it's quite in Motte & Baily territory. It can after all be perfectly consistent to hold both views (i.e. that society treats people in various gendered ways and favors men over women on average) - you just have to be careful about what you are taking as evidence for what claims.
The original statement is perhaps even more in danger of falling into this and similar logical fallacy - the existence of a subset of disenfranchised men is not evidence against society favoring men generally, while it is evidence against that being universal.
> I didn't present it well - though I'm not convinced it's quite in Motte & Baily territory.
I could also be reading into your words more than is there as a result of my own prior experience.
> It can after all be perfectly consistent to hold both views (i.e. that society treats people in various gendered ways and favors men over women on average) - you just have to be careful about what you are taking as evidence for what claims.
It is possible to both perspectives at the same time, but it seems a bit like addition of epicycles to Ptolemaic cosmology: an post-hoc modification to the general theory without much deeper examination into the inconsistency.
Of course all scientific models are off in some regard, it doesn't prevent them from being useful. But it is good to be aware of the edge cases in our model, in case it turns out we need to update it.
> the existence of a subset of disenfranchised men is not evidence against society favoring men generally, while it is evidence against that being universal.
Let me pose it this way: The question isn't just why are there men who are disenfranchised. If society is systematically biased against women, then why are they disproportionately absent from the lowest tiers?
> an post-hoc modification to the general theory without much deeper examination into the inconsistency.
I don't see it that way at all ... it is clearly true in a statistical sense that outcomes from a small sub-population do not necessarily tell you much about the general population at all. It is obviously possible that there is a general systematic bias in favor of men across most segments of society, but a different stronger bias against some sub-population of low-status men that easily compensates for it.
Allowing for this (indeed proposing it) doesn't require any mental gymnastics at all, merely an allowance for complexity. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying it doesn't even run afoul of Occam.
> if society is systematically biased against women, then why are they disproportionately absent from the lowest tiers?
I proposed one possibility above, in terms of how their issues are dealt with. More generally though, it's not entirely clear that women are absent here - it really depends on how you draw the line "lowest tier". It's true that men are represented more highly in homeless populations (65/35 ish, if I recall correctly) and prisons (even higher). So it is of course interesting to ask why that is. Part of that might be answered by what interventions are available and taken up before that point (e.g. we know there are connections between homelessness and mental health, and we know women, for what ever reasons, are more likely to receive treatment. Are these connected to homelessness stats? Or how much of prison representation relates to prosecution and/or sentencing stats?). We also know most homeless children are with their (majority single) mothers. It's plausible that social programs work a lot harder to get children out of this status, and indirectly their mothers. Not sure what affect that would have on the overall stats.
It's much less clear to me that this is a good definition of "lowest tier" though, clearly some prison populations and most/all homeless are in there, but it inclusive enough? What about other populations? Sex-trade workers are disproportionately women, and most of them are very low-status, but relatively few are counted as homeless. Etc. etc. I would have to know a hell of a lot more of the poverty literature before I would be comfortable that I understood where to draw this line.
Anyway we have probably reached the depth of viable conversation in this medium, or close to it. And that on a subject that is difficult to get honest engagement with. Thank you for being reasonable the whole way through, it's rare and I appreciate it.
>Sex-trade workers are disproportionately women, and most of them are very low-status, but relatively few are counted as homeless
They are making a trade in exchange for resources. No matter how horrible one thinks that trade is, it would rank as slightly better than the people who don't even have that option.
Of course those in actual enslavement situations are in even a worse position, but you then get into the movement of slaves based on where they can be most exploited and thus gender ratio of slave.
> Because the differences between male and female "bodies", meaning anatomical differences like sex characteristics, are obvious and self-evident, while differences in brain structure are not and therefore require careful study.
That careful study has been done. The science is settled, and there to learn for anyone with an open mind.
> Further, because there are well-known and deeply entrenched cultural biases that risk derailing this careful study and therefore any initial assumptions that coincide with these cultural biases must be eliminated before serious work can begin.
I somewhat agree with this statement. But judging by the ink spilled over sex differences in places like the New York Times, and by the views on the subject that one is allowed to hold in the polite company of higher education and industry, and by the intensity of the backlash when one publicly deviates from those views: I suspect the "deeply entrenched biases" most significant for present-day researchers lean quite opposite from what you assume.
what burden of proof was required to come to this conclusion and why is that burden so much lower than the one required to conclude there are gender differences in human brains? Liberal universities are some of the most politically-correct, left-leaning bastions in the world. Members are imediately called to resign if they dare state anything against the progressive groupthink [1]. Yet you state as if it were well-established fact that "bias is a problem". this is not even counting the programs, scholarships, and active recruiting for more women in science.
I see 2 problems with accusations of "bias". For one, they're never levelled at an individual so the problem can be addressd at the source. It's always something nebulous, like "bias exists in science". So it's kind of like accusing all scientists of being sexist (or implicitly, male scientists, unless you want to clarify that women, too, are part of the problem), while at the same time accusing none of them. It's a tool that conditions its accused members to atone for something they didn't necessarily do, or if they did at one time, they're never forgiven. It makes everyone in the group feel guilty, regardless of whether they actually did something they should feel bad for.
The second problem with bias is that there's no bar for it "being a problem" ? In otherwords, if "it" exists in even one person somewhere in academia, one time, is it a problem ? If so, how long of a period does there have to be without bias for it to no longer be a problem ? If, say, a CMU professor makes a sexist tweet, how long is there a "sexism problem" at CMU? Forever? Until he is fired? Until he apologizes? None of these terms is defined, because I suspect it's not a problem intended to be solved. It's a social manipulation tool.
Sometimes people have "bias" due to experience with reality, but definitely any result you dislike should be repeated again and again. It's obviously a big problem for science when reality is coherent.
>Because the differences between male and female "bodies", meaning anatomical differences like sex characteristics, are obvious and self-evident, while differences in brain structure are not and therefore require careful study.
That seems like a very odd, unscientific position to take. We know that men and women have different physical characteristics and hormonal affects (as an obvious example, women have a menstrual cycle while men do not). Ergo, the hypothalamus and pituitary gland (two areas of the brain which play pivotal roles in the human endocrine system) are structurally different between the sexes; this is obvious and self-evident.
Luckily, we all know that the soul is completely separated from the body, so no amount of difference in hormones or brains can have an impact on our thinking, feeling, or behavior, which are completely determined by the society.
Also, differences between males and females in animals are completely irrelevant for humans, because humans have nothing in common with animals.
Thus spoke the latest science (of 17th century, but who cares, science is still science).
The irony of your closing statement ("any result that just so happens....to agree with preconceived notions about "how things are" should be considered extremely suspicious and scrutinised....and noone who really wants to understand the relevant subjects should feel comfortable accepting such results as settled") is that such "settled" facts in the scientific community are exactly the things that Cahill has been challenging in the neuroscience field.
Specifically to his point that:
> the rationale was there aren’t any differences between males and females, so you avoid the unnecessarily complicated feature of the female hormonal cycle and study the male.
In other words...the "settled" science actually excludes the explicit study of, and furtherance of our understanding of, the female brain. Which in turn leads to a lessened ability to treat and address all sorts of conditions.
So by all means decry bias...but be aware that bias can be introduced by scientists wanting to cut corners and make research faster and easier so they can publish more just as much as they can be introduced by gender superiority zealots.
Well, Cahill has his opinions, Ripon has hers. Obviously there is a
controversy on this issue, between experts on the matter, and I am not
equipped to resolve it, or even to know who is representing some kind of
consensus opinion. Basically, I know a couple of things about computers. I
don't feel I have the knowledge to weigh in on any other scientific subjects.
That said, I have to observe that if the matter was settled the way Cahill
claims it is, Nature wouldn't be publishing dithyrambs for Ripon's book, and
Cahill wouldn't be publishing his own article on Quillete. It would rather be
the other way. It's Quillette that's know to court controversy and Nature
that's know to be as controversial as a pot of instant noodles.
> Because the differences between male and female "bodies", meaning anatomical differences like sex characteristics, are obvious and self-evident, while differences in brain structure are not and therefore require careful study.
The categorical denial of neurological sex differences of the sort that was published by Nature does not encourage careful study. In fact, it does rather the opposite by turning the subject into a political football. This distracts from the more important issue that arguably women have been under-served by the medical community precisely due to the denial of such differences.
People see explicit bias in society and conclude that any time they see a difference between gender it must be because of implicit bias. This is what practically all discussion is centered around. One camp defaulting to bias, the other camp disagreeing.
Bias is a terrible default as it require the other camp to prove a negative.
When I was visiting Pre-schools for my son to enter at 18 months I asked them how they handle discipline and behavior. They said that sometimes they have a class which is mostly boys and it’s quite chaotic. If the class is mostly girls it’s much more calm. That’s at 18-30 months.
Yes, and they are increasingly diagnosing those children with ADHD and putting them under drugs to control them (roughly 60% of diagnosed children with ADHD are under medication, 84% of them are boys):
I'm worried about this outcome for my 4-year-old. He needs several hours a day to run himself tired or he acts like a crazy person. I don't think that means he is a crazy person, or has ADHD, or whatever. I think it just means he needs to run himself tired for several hours a day. Hell, I'd probably be saner and healthier if I did the same.
Meanwhile the kindergarten he'll attend has cut recess to once per day, something like 20-25min, and if they do indoor "recess" due to weather they often just watch a movie. Even if he cools off some by the time he goes, he's gonna need like 4x that much running around outside or in a gym per day, minimum, to not end up medicated or constantly in trouble.
"One of the things that blows students’ minds is to realize that women disproportionately, about twice as much, suffer from all anxiety and depression disorders relative to men, and almost all our models for studying anxiety disorders are based on male animals."
This right here is one of the concrete reasons for why we NEED to recognize neurological sex differences, and have studies that focus specifically on genders. We could discover loads about treatment differences by gender, and really help a lot of people who are suffering from depression (something that is becoming more prevalent by the day).
The NIH has moved the requirements in rodent research recently. Previously, using only male rodents (bucks) was considered just fine. After some really alarming studies out of McGill [0], much of the field has changed. Now, you must garner a waiver to only use one sex vs. the other in rodent studies. The effects of this change remain to be seen, but are generally thought of as positive.
Some context is needed though. The estrous cycle of dams is fairly complicated[1]. Controlling variables in hormones, hydration, etc. is much easier in bucks. Since the experiments are easier to control for, you need less rodents and therefore you need less funding for rodent care and housing, and you need to sacrifice less rodents to do the experiment (generally). Hence why they have been the 'preferred' rodent sex historically, among many other reasons.
Additionally, rodents are some of the 'first' level in vivo models, but are far from the last in the long line of research that is human applicable. It is very common that research done in rodents will not translate to other mainstay research vertebrates like dogs and monkeys, let alone into humans. The differences in the sexes are vastly outweighed by the differences in species.
Generally, yes, it is good that we are now defaulting to having to use both sexes of rodents. However, costs and sacrifices per experiment have risen as a result. All things have trade-offs in our world.
From the article: “To see that headline, honestly, knowing what I know about the dramatic change in neuroscience in the past 15 to 20 years, it’s not a lot different than seeing a headline like “The Myth That Evolution Applies to Humans.” That would be comparable.”
If there is a sex-defined bi-modal distribution of neurological characteristics, meaning for instance in IQ, then there are two separate but overlapping curves for the sexes, then it's true that there is both overlap and difference between the sexes. This difference is clearly evident in physical traits like height, which is an objective measurement, whereas the utility of IQ will be debated for decades, most likely. We can't argue that IQ is non-overlapping though, there are low and high outliers in each sex or in every subgroup that will overlap with every other subgroup (same goes for race, economic status, education, any socio-dem slice you can think of). Given large populations, this is practically a certainty.
IMO, the problem arises in the subjectivity of psycho-metrics, which can be very lackluster tools. IQ, cognitive function, working memory, long term memory, and on and on -much harder to establish a clear difference between these across the two sexes, given with such imprecise and arbitrary measures.
One thing of note. The cited review by Cahill says this:
"Rippon does not mention Udry’s work, or its essential replication by Udry’s harshest critic, a leading sociologist who has described herself as a “feminist” who now “wrestles” with testosterone."
But the person in question had this to say:
"This totally misrepresents my re-analysis of Udry data. (I’m the feminist who wrestles with testosterone). Might misrepresent much else as well?"
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 267 ms ] threadHer exact words were “men and women are equal but different, in many ways they’re complimentary” she then explained that some men look down on women because they didn’t value how women think about things. She also said the same is true of some women viewing men.
Later she would say that men and women are equally shitty to each other (when I was being abused at school by girls who knew I could not physically retaliate).
I currently hold these views and neither feminism nor men’s-rights-activists seem to ascribe to those values, at best they pay lip service to the notion that we’re (on average, and grossly generalising) complimentary.
I remember a small blurb about “judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree” in reference to our education system-
Maybe it’s a old way of thinking. Maybe my mum wasn’t right at all, but I don’t understand why we can’t celebrate our differences instead of expecting women to fit in to men sized roles. Or alternatively making a “middle-ground” box which has to fit both sexes.
If anyone wants to alter my way of thinking; I’m completely open to it- I am perfectly willing to accept that I’m old fashioned or incorrect here.
Also, I am under the impression that rolling ones eyes at a choice to stay at home is a continued devaluation of women’s work. The upkeep of a living location and the caring of any little humans is a significant labor, such that upon outsourcing is often equivalent to a median yearly salary of a single person. However because there isn’t a common framework to evaluate worth beyond money in the society I live in, unpaid labor isn’t valued.
People who are driven by money, no matter gender, skin color, etc shouldn't be held back from it because of preconceptions about their ability. Only their actual ability should matter.
To give a concrete example: Dame Caroline Haslett who was the President of the Women's Engineering Society in Britain created objectively the safest electrical outlet and plugging mechanism ever conceived (as long as you don't step on one). There was no such mandate for it to be so safe, you could argue that a man could have done exactly the same but I'd rather consider that she was being extremely empathetic as to how the device would be used and that safety in this area would quite literally save the lives of men, women and children.
A world without her contribution would be a lesser one, but I would argue that it was made with her femininity, not with how much she filled a man-shaped role.
Believing science is one thing, but that sounds like exactly the sort of "gendered narrative building" that feminists are trying to fight against. When they say stuff like "gender roles are fictional," a large part of it is due to people inventing stories in their heads about gender roles that aren't true. I think that it's fair to not try to add anything beyond what's demonstrably there.
Why? If peoples' experiences and psychology (in my layman's understanding of agreeableness) show that women tend to be more empathetic than men, it seems perfectly reasonable for them to suggest that that may have benefited an inventor in a fantastic discovery they made. People have no obligation to buy into others' narratives. Groups can claim whatever they want is fictional, it doesn't mean everyone else has to censor their speech accordingly.
I thought the person you were responding to was making a very thoughtful point, and one that was very respectful of women and the valuable insight some of them have that is often overlooked.
The problem is his comment can very easily be read as "Women should do what they are good at". This implies "taking care of kids and home" for many invested in this narrative. On contested topic like this, we should try to phrase our comments very clearly.
> People have no obligation to buy into others' narratives.
Our society seems to work best if we agree on fundamental "narratives". Equal opportunity being good is one of them. Actually, not really, since perfect equal opportunity would require us to not be able to help our own children more than others can help theirs. But let's not get into capitalism/class stuff but back to gender. A talking point the other side likes to make is "wanting equal outcomes". Nope, that would be stupid. But significantly unequal outcomes are a good indicator we'll find unequal opportunities when we look into it. Or some other reason. But the other side very quickly likes to accept "men and women are just different" as other reason and prefers to disregard e.g. fixing societal feedback loops via affirmative action. That finally brings me to your first part:
> If peoples' experiences and psychology (in my layman's understanding of agreeableness) show that women tend to be more empathetic than me
I don't think we have hard scientific research data showing to what degree this is based on nature or nurture. The latter would be problematic since against the spirit of equal opportunity. Of cause that question is hard to answer, since randomized controlled trials are impossible and understanding the physics and it's emergent properties is still beyond us.
Or were there are other factors e.g. stimulating, flexible, empowering, creative etc.
Because pretty sure women are selecting roles for a range of different factors as well. You know because all women aren't the same. Just like all men aren't the same.
But you said it yourself: "several career paths would likely have made me happier".
What's the point in living if not to be happy? Money is just a means to avoid unhappiness. It's been proven time and time again that after a decent income money does not increase happiness.
I also do not have a trust fund, actually the contrary, I grew up as poor as you can possibly be in the UK. Mother didn't work, had various vices including drinking and smoking which did not jive with our financial situation (living on benefits).
Due to that my mother put more worth into immaterial things, and that rubbed off on me I think.
Additionally; I've only been employed in a self-sustaining fashion for 8 years now. Perhaps I've lost what it feels like to be destitute- but I don't think I'd trade happiness for money because outside of not worrying about bills and food money doesn't actually buy me anything. Just a little more ease of mind.
I think there's also some pretty big cultural differences between the US and western Europe when it comes to decisions to pursue money or not.
I'm (reasonably) good at it. I don't like it much. But be slightly good and have a little experience in programming and if you're not careful pretty soon it's way better than most other options you've got, by every measure except "enjoy and am proud of what I do".
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/04/20/the-worst-jo...
1. Taxi Driver: Uber and Lyft have significantly increased the number of women, and there are lots of efforts to get more women involved. https://www.gosafr.com/ is one example.
2. Logger: This is probably the kind of job you were thinking of. Logging is completely male dominated, but there are some small efforts at change: https://www.pressherald.com/2019/03/17/the-axe-women-loggers... and https://www.tigercat.com/between-the-branches/logger-girl/
3. Newspaper reporter: Majority male, but not overwhelmingly. Definitely a big push to equalize the field: http://www.womensmediacenter.com/reports/the-status-of-women...
4. Retail salesperson: Majority women.
5. Enlisted military personnel: Hard to summarize here, but issues around women in the US military come up quite frequently in Congress and elsewhere, and the history of increasing participation and equality is long.
6. Corrections officer: Women were 37% of adult officers and 51% of juvenile officers in 2007 (http://www.corrections.com/articles/21703-women-as-correctio...). There is a push to increase equality: https://www.correctionsone.com/women-in-corrections/
7. Disc jockey: Hard to find exact stats, but it's the same story as everywhere else in modern society. Used to be completely male dominated, now women are increasingly entering the industry and fighting against entrenched stereotypes. A random article: https://www.laweekly.com/music/women-djs-are-out-there-clubs...
8. Broadcaster: Feel like I'm starting to repeat myself. It's the same story as everywhere else in the media. Look at the Women's Media Center and other organizations for evidence of a push.
9. Advertising salesperson: Is this the kind of job you thought was on this list? Majority women, apparently: https://datausa.io/profile/soc/112011/#demographics
10. Painter: Seems to be similar to logging. I honestly don't know why. Presumably it's historically male (like everything), and it's not a particularly desirable career for anyone.
etc.
Industries like logging and painting are outliers. There are some jobs that are so physically demanding that men have a significant innate advantage, but there's no natural reason for any industry to be 95+% male.
There is evidence that women are judged by appearance and men by financial success. Even a mild effect would be more than enough to skew the outcomes; it would impact the more competitive representatives of each gender.
I think this is the most important question to solve if we want more equal outcome in worklife.
When I was young the highest paying job direct out of high school was underwater welder. Not many teenage girls are signing up for that program, nor are there much political interest to get 50/50 gender ration for jobs that work in the dark, dangerous, on rusty oil rigs far away from land.
In a bit of irony, the same can be said for professions dominated by women. Hired midwifes during the summer vacation months here in Sweden are getting salaries up to 9k a month. Very few people here in Sweden has a monthly pay that high. Demand can skyrocket when you only recruit from half the population, at which point the employer will pay what the market demands.
There are many women who are physically, emotionally and intellectually stronger than many men. And they are more than capable of doing a "men sized role" just as well as any man. And the situation applies vice versa as well.
If you want to celebrate the differences between men and women, whatever that ever means, well then knock yourself out. But generalising the traits of billions of people is frankly insane and guaranteed to insult some decent size proportion of them.
Encourage men and women as individuals to pursue roles that match their aptitudes and personalities even if they do not line up with their sex.
Provide wisdom or rules of thumb based on how men and women as populations may differ.
However, the problem that I would see with this approach is that humans tend to be lazy in their thinking, so general rules of thumb tend to become absolute rules.
My (also single) dad says that men are smarter and more ambitious than women, that womens' place is at home, taking care of the children and that society is broken because women are trying to do the things that men are naturally better at doing and don't want to do what they're good at.
Your mom against my dad. Who wins?
Not to mention that there seems to be considerable scientific controversy on what this "modern scientific understanding" is -and how else could it be? Science is a debate- I doubt we can settle it by listening to what our moms and dads say.
your comment:
> My (also single) dad says that men are smarter and more ambitious than women, that womens' place is at home, taking care of the children and that society is broken because women are trying to do the things that men are naturally better at doing and don't want to do what they're good at.
Men are smarter at what exactly? Mathematics?
Although the question of whether there is a gender difference in math seems like a simple one, the answer is complicated. Overall there are only small differences in boys’ and girls’ math performance; those differences depend on the age and skill level of the student, what type of math they are attempting and how big of a dissimilarity is needed to say that boys’ and girls’ math performance is truly different.
Ambitious? Again, Ambitious at what? travelling the world? starting and sustaining a family? or is it solely on what dollar amount is ascribed to an hour of your day?
A womans place is at home is about as sexist an argument I have ever heard. By that logic my "place" is running around the jungle with a spear? please don't argue such bad faith.
If I were to try to dig into what your argument actually is then I would assume you dislike my comment because it leans heavily on what my mother said.
We're I arguing in bad faith I would probably say that you're rejecting her logic so outrightly because she is a woman.
But I'm going to try to argue something else.
I'm going to ask what smart and ambitious mean mean to you.
Conversely, I don't know what your mom meant by "how women think about things".
How do women think about things? I mean- according to your mom. You report her saying and seem to agree with it. Do you know what she means?
Edit: Do I really need to make it clear I disagree with my dad? I'm a woman. Is it very likely I reported here what my dad says to argue that I'm less smart and less ambitious than a man?
I don't believe I ever argued that I understood women?
I Merely stated that on average women differ from men and that it's no less valuable- I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I believe that I know how women think.
It's genuinely impossible to know how all women think just like it's impossible to know how all _people_ think.
But you report her words here and you seem to agree with her. If you don't understand what she means, how can you agree with her? And why report her words if you don't know what she means?
I believe I clearly understood my mothers intent here, I am comfortable defending the statement, where am I ambiguous in my understanding?
I can call her if you want me to confirm but in my opinion her words were incredibly concise and clear.
Her exact words were “men and women are equal but different, in many ways they’re complimentary” she then explained that some men look down on women because they didn’t value how women think about things.
I'm dangerously close to stating common stereotypes so please take the following with good faith;
I knew a female engineer who was very good at her job (she was in networking), after having a child she discussed with her husband (also a network engineer at another company, roughly the same pay) about reducing her working hours.
He was fine with it, but he was open to also taking time off, she felt it was needed because she was the mother, purely her choice. Her manager took it graciously and put her down to 80% time.
However, one engineer resented that she was away 2-half-days a week, he ascribed values that he held to her and couldn't understand why she would want to be home with her kid instead of making more of her career.
--
a male example: I have a close personal friend who is what you would call a manly-man.
His girlfriend obviously loves him, but his girlfriends best friend is not a fan of how he's "aloof", often she considers that he is secretly plotting something or is going to cheat on her. He lacks the empathy to be "seriously deep". He might even be a psychopath; by the way she tells it anyway.
The truth is that he's just a bigger guy and he is quiet, it's different when it's just me and him but with a large group he recedes into being very quiet.
She never made much of an effort to connect with him; but she judges him based on values she has, values about being open and warm and caring and smiley.
My mother has more "anecdotes" but the way things are is that it's not statistically backed. But it's a good rule of thumb to ensure that I at least try to understand someone else's values before I judge their actions (or, non-actions).
I don’t think there is anything I can say to convey the meaning I meant then. I’m sorry that I am not understandable.
I’m not that old yet but feminism to me growing up was always that men and women should have the same opportunities and treatment, but never that they were the same. Maybe I’m wrong but that’s more of a recent phenomenon which claimed for itself the title of feminism - I doubt the original feminists would agree with it, but I don’t know. (I find it sad because to me it’s turned a serious movement for which very brave women had to fight hard into a joke.)
1) men and women become more equal;
2) the remaining reasons for inequality become predominantly biological (because the social ones are reduced, while the biological ones remain).
But it is easy to make a completely opposite conclusion, such as: "if some differences are social, then all differences have to be social". And then, when trying harder does not change things anymore, it is only a proof that we need to try even harder.
My take is: don't describe things as biological unless you are damn well sure that they are. We (as a society) have been wrong too many times before.
(And similarly, this doesn't prove that everything is genetic. You can't get science by merely doing the opposite of other people's prejudices.)
The belief that nothing is genetic can also be used to oppress people. For example, you can dismiss highly intelligent people from poor families by insisting that high intelligence doesn't really exist and everything comes from universities, and then pointing out how poor people usually don't come from the best universities.
Any kind of incorrect belief can be strategically used to hurt someone.
This is still true today, to a certain extent (never is a heavy word). It's important to understand that Feminism isn't some authoritarian philosophy with a single set of ideas that you must subscribe to consider yourself a Feminist. Sure, some Feminists challenge gender essentialism in one way or another, but that doesn't mean all do or that it is a critical part of Feminism. The best way to learn is to talk to some local political groups.
What you're seeing there is an effect of the internet, not an effect of shifts in feminist movements. The internet gives everyone a place to speak which is great but the loudest/most astonishing/most disruptive voices are the ones that come out on top. Not the majority, not the thoughtful, not the ones who take action, not the voices who would like to have a conversation. If you dive past the surface I don't think you'd find modern feminism a joke and think that it has grown and matured. But I'm just one opinion
The right not to be grabbed or groped or touched without consenting, to be evaluated on ability to do the work and not on appearance, to have supervisors and coworkers focused on working together and not on how to date you.
These are all issues disproportionately impacting women, that are not requests for "equality of outcome" or that men and women are the same, and very much critical to addressing "equality of opportunity".
That men are raised with the social expectation to not find problem and to not let something impact them is not to say that women are impacted more by it. With reference to non-consensual encounters, there is a great deal of bias that refuses to see men as victims and even encourages them to see being the victim as a beneficial event for them.
But I would be very surprised if the overall number of men experiencing non-consensual touching was greater than the number of women.
There are also numerous self reports by bouncers in bars that point out how bad it gets and the extent of the double standard.
Or consider the case of celebrities openly admitting to such crimes of recent and the vast difference in social reaction based on the gender of the celebrity.
On the one hand we have women in Iran facing real dangers to take off their veils. Then on the other we have this strange group that deny science and demand we believe men and women are identical. I also reject this pattern where women should measure and compare themselves to men, and shape themselves into men. Which seems very anti-feminist. You're fine to do it, but to label that feminist is (I believe) wrong.
What we're looking at here is a bit more complicated; the modern situation (not just feminism but a number of different position groups) wants to downplay the existence of actual differences between the sexes. This seems partly motivated by existing, bad/biased science, and partly by the worry that if women and men are physically different, that people will use that as a basis for discrimination. I do see a bit of what appears to be science denialism amongst the "there is no male brain or female brain" crowd, which I find worrisome. Ultimately, I am with the second-wave feminists: people deserve equal opportunities regardless of their differences.
Interesting. I've never really got the impression that Men's Rights Activists ascribe to any specific notion like that. To me the movement seems to be about shedding light on the injustices of our legal systems where men get screwed over: divorce court, custody of a child, alimony, punishments seemingly not being equal between the sexes. I guess they also have an element of fighting against social injustices such as false claims.
I might be wrong though. I might simply be seeing only the things I care about in their movement, since I see it so rarely.
In the end it doesn't matter if either movement has bad apples. What matter is if we want a society that make abortion illegal or a legal system that base judgement on gender.
I actually like this line a lot, because it points to several of the problems in modern society. It makes you ask the question: "on what grounds is worth judged?"
And then you realize that, without a clear way of thinking about "worth" (which is something organized religions provided), we, at least in the US, fall back on "economic value", which is determined by "aptitude". So we can pretty quickly see the philosophical pit we've fallen into: if "worth" and "aptitude" are intertwined, then the statement admits women are indeed "worth less".
I want to agree with that statement. But, there's a problem: how can we come up with a method of judging worth that doesn't rely on some sort of "over-human validator" (e.g. God)? Or alternatively, how can we come up with a broadly acceptable method of judging human worth, without falling into the pitfalls of Abrahamic religious practices?
Our brains are pretty well built for this. Are you sure that requiring human-type validation is even avoidable at all?
Who's asking you to "expect" anything? I think if you assess people's abilities individually everybody's happy.
It doesn't look like it. A lot of people in science are demanding equality of outcomes for groups (when the outcome is positive). They are well done pass asking for equality of opportunities.
Well, James Damore got fired from Google (and, apparently, blackballed out of the employment market entirely) for insinuating that Google was assessing people's abilities individually. While I think you're correct, the problem is that too many people seem to try to evaluate whether or not everybody's abilities are being assessed individually by looking at the end result rather than looking at the individuals involved.
Equity, not equality.
Meritocracy was originally devised as a negative concept, simply because the idea of what constitutes 'merit' is subjective and complex.
"Do your best, help out the world, and your needs will be taken care of."
As a goal for structuring society, if that isn't in your top 2 of "things to collectively strive for," I don't think it's a very good society. I grew up on the Star Trek vision of utopia, though, and hope that some day humanity still gets there.
That's not a structure. It's at best a goal or more realistically a slogan.
and specifically, why wouldn't you want to make sure each individual's needs in the society are met?
Very funny.
I'd say it's more that anyone familiar with the history of that slogan knows that the systems associated with it very consistently do not work.
As for the systems associated with it, I think it's an oversimplification to say they do not work. As I mentioned, there is a not-insignificant number of people out there who long for a return to life under Soviet control (just from people I've met in my travels). To them, it worked. It wasn't perfect, but I didn't say that and nothing is. To a great degree, history is written by the victors, anyway.
Rather than play on red scare feels, I'd appreciate engaging with the idea, and again I ask: what's better than that, and what about that don't you like?
I'll even posit an alternative: personal freedom is the most important thing, even if it means people's needs aren't met.
I don't agree, because the world is resource-rich enough to ensure everyone's needs are met, so where do you draw the line? who do we say it's okay for their needs not to be met? rather than defer to an amorphous "market," I'd like to hear from you whose needs should not be met.
Ever read Solzhenitsyn?
Strangest distinct memory I have of hanging with people in a post-Soviet state: partying all night long, passing out some time around 3, waking up at 5 to hearing them all singing the Soviet anthem -- not the Russian anthem, though the melody's the same -- and then talking in hushed tones the next day with some of them about life being better before the fall.
And that's just one of many conversations I've had with people about this stuff. shrug
That, because you met some people who claim to prefer Soviet rule, that Soviet rule was better for everyone?
That, because you met some people who claim to prefer Soviet rule, that no one suffered under Soviet oppression?
That, because you met some people who claim to prefer Soviet rule, that the suffering of some under Soviet oppression was acceptable?
That, because you met some people who claim to prefer Soviet rule, [insert claim here]?
Additionally, are you claiming that Solzhenitsyn's claims are false? Are you dismissing his lengthy work based on some anecdotes from hung-over all-night party-goers?
Are you being serious at all?
But it raised a few points I do want to address.
Yes, people were oppressed under the Soviet system. American capitalism is oppressive to many, too. Ask a prisoner who can now only access books on an "allowed books" list.
No, soviet life wasn't better for everyone; American capitalism isn't better for everyone. Ask the millions who can't access health care and die prematurely for it.
Saying that "some suffered under soviet rule, therefore it is unacceptable" sets a bar of "nobody should suffer" that is unreasonably high; it is also a bar that American capitalism very distinctly fails to clear. Suffering is great in the US. Ask the homeless, ask the struggling. There's no American freedom for them, it's an empty slogan. There's only suffering for them.
My point that some prefer soviet rule is to rebut the generalization that it did not work. It didn't for many. It did for many others. American capitalism does not work for many; hence the extremism in political life. People want a change.
My point is that it's an oversimplification to say ours is good, theirs was bad, when the history and reality is much more complicated than that.
I want a change: I want evil people like you to shut up and face reality.
> My point is that it's an oversimplification to say ours is good, theirs was bad, when the history and reality is much more complicated than that.
It's fucking simple: millions of people died in famines and gulags in the USSR. You have the gall to compare "people who can't access health care and die prematurely" to being DISAPPEARED, TORTURED, MURDERED, AND STARVED, INTENTIONALLY, BY A GOVERNMENT THAT CLAIMED TO BE FOR THEM.
You're a filthy, rotten, leftist liar--forgive my redundancy.
The idea of being equal in worth is interesting. How do you define it? Is it a kind of humanitarian worth? That all people are deserving of basic rights, decency and respect? Such would be the case even for handicapped or mentally challenged individuals? Or are you saying that their set of aptitudes, while not identical, sum up to an equal worth in utilitarian terms? Say, for example, taking one of the very strong stereotype, that child bearing is so useful to our societies, that it makes women as worthy as even the strongest of men and their aptitude for heavy lifting?
Now, the idea of equal aptitude is relevant as well. There's two main reasons for that. The first is that, some aptitudes, like intelligence, such as talents in mathematics, or decision making in general, has historically been thought of as inferior for women. Yet, there's never been evidence of this as far as I know. In fact, now that we admitted women in higher education, they are out outclassing men in most fields when it comes to grades. So this is a very relevant debate, because bias still exist, that a pretty young woman can't be as smart as a young man.
The other reason is the wash of the average. Lots of women are physically stronger then lots of men. Similarly, lots of men are emotionally more adept then lots of women. Thus aptitude shouldn't be characterised by gender, but it should be more individualized. This applies in some scenarios, like not giving women applicants a chance at very physical jobs. Even though some women have the necessary aptitudes.
https://quillette.com/2019/03/29/denying-the-neuroscience-of...
Ideas that the article does not propose include:
- Men are better than Women or vice versa.
- Men are better suited to X activity or job.
The point was that the science should be evidence lead and defended from ideologues regardless of your view on the broader political issues. Ideologues attempt to bend all evidence to support a pre-existing conclusion, and the politicisation of science is bad in all cases because it undermines the entire process. It's depressing that a publication such as Nature should be affected in this way.
The money quote. The situation in neuroscience is pretty much the same as if in Machine Learning people would say ”You must use just white males in face recognition training”.
Just one example. This issue in ML has been on the surface for few years now.
> And, as The Atlantic story points out, other groups have found in the past that facial recognition algorithms developed in Asia were more likely to accurately identify Asian people than white people; while algorithms developed in parts of Europe and the US were able to identify white faces better.
Maybe Wakanda can share their facial recognition tech and we can combine them all into a fair model? (Joking about the first part, obviously, and about the second part, e.g. Aboriginal Australians, Maori, etc that don't neatly fit into those three categories.)
'Blank slate theory' simply isn't what feminists are arguing; they are arguing that our society has a woefully poor record of hastily ascribing traits to a kind of biological determinism, and further claims of that type should be heavily scrutinised.
They're denying science for ideological ends. It's pretty much the same thing as conservatives with climate change. They don't like what science has to say, so they're trying to shut it down.
I'm generally pro-feminism, but no 'side' has a monopoly on bad opinions.
The physical differences exist today and are exhibited based on biological genders. That does not preclude that these differences are unduly influenced by environmental issues (including socialization). However denying that they exist (which is what Cahill is objecting to here) on the basis that the cause might be environmental and not "innate" just means that the ability to understand and treat neurological disorders in females decreases.
The reality is that there are differences. The cause of that reality can be complicated and nuanced and not inescapable. but as the change in societal standards is quite slow all that's happening is a disservice to an entire half of the population.
It is because there are inequalities naturally, either innate or acquired, that it is necessary to state equality as a goal.
This is the old is/ought dichotomy.
No, to any sane, empathic, person, the meaning of equality is clear: you want similar outcomes for everybody. It sounds complicated only to the people who think that a flat tax is the only fair tax. Let's not indulge to their (often voluntarily) obtuseness. In 20 years, they will pretend that equity means something else and we will have to come up with another word to express the same old concept.
You know, it took me a while to understand how well balanced the french motto was: liberty, equality, fraternity. If you lack one of these, you will corrupt the two others. If you think about equality while also keeping fraternity in mind (as in, "what would I want for my loved ones?"), then it becomes obvious that we are not talking about crap like "equality of chances" but true equality.
Equality from Merriam-Webster dictionary: the quality or state of being equal; the quality or state of having the same rights, social status, etc.
French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: Article I – Men are born and remain free and equal in rights (highlight mine). Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.
BTW - I come from a country with a communist history and the result of enforcing equality of outcome is indeed equality as you understand it i.e. almost everyone was equally poor. Some people actually feel genuinely sentimental about it. For example, a bubble gum or coca cola bought from capitalist shop with hard to come by dollars had to feel special. My mother often tells my a story how she enjoyed coca cola when visiting West. In general, my parents were really appreciating being able to eat oranges or bananas basically once a year for Christmas. Now, in capitalism it's an everyday thing and doesn't feel special anymore.
This is not obvious to “any sane empathic person” in fact it seems quite controversial and would seem to involve a terrifying level of government control in each and everyone’s lives and livelihood.
"the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
From semantics to gulag in 2 messages.
One must really hate the idea of a fair society when one equates equality with the crippling of society.
Hence the reason who no one makes one single idea the only absolute moral goal of a society.
I have yet to find someone who argues that therefore, we should consider freedom a dangerous ideal.
Before imagining some dystopia where government impose the same lunch menu to everybody, start by imagining a government that would fund healthcare enough so that life expectancy could be unrelated to parents' income. That would be a fucking good start.
However it seems unreasonable for example to seek equal outcomes between person A who spends their time studying (deferring gratification) and person B who spends their time in leisure activities. Or person A who saves for retirement and person B who spends all the money.
This is not from a moral perspective, but just in terms of how we wish to incentivise behaviour.
When in doubt, just wonder how to balance liberty, equality, fraternity. Do you want to reward kids who study well? I bet. Do you want adults dying on the street for their choices when they were 10 year old? Maybe not.
And this is exactly a moral perspective: you are deciding who deserves what. You may argue that from a practical perspective we can't give equal outcomes to everybody, and I agree with that. Which is why my first message emphasizes the fact that this is a goal, an objective to strive toward.
Inequalities and the desire to get more are what fuels our society today, so as long as we have the current organization, we will have some amount of that. The moral choices of making equality a worthwhile goal says that we still want to minimize inequalities as much as possible.
I'm completely in favour of efforts and systems that seek to overcome said unfairness/injustice/corruption.
At the same time, in a well-functioning economy, higher levels of responsibility, expectation and pressure will accrue to those with higher levels of capability in any given domain. E.g., the more capable and experienced the surgeon, the more difficult and risky the surgical operations that will be assigned to them.
With that increased level of responsibility, expectation and pressure, will come greater benefits - whether financial remuneration, social/political status/influence, resources to manage/invest/allocate, etc. Though that also carries with it even more responsibility, expectation and pressure.
Of course, plenty of people are content to live a modest life, with neither high levels of responsibility, expectation and pressure, nor high levels of financial remuneration, social/political status/influence etc.
That's a perfectly reasonable trade-off.
I'm interested in your take on how the reality should be any different to this.
That is, what's your suggestion for how an economy can function well, in which everyone ends up with the same level of remuneration, status and influence, whilst making vastly different contributions to society and living with vastly different levels of responsibility, expectation and pressure?
You should differentiate politics from society to understand what I mean, I'm sorry but you misunderstood my previous comment.
Have you read Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron? Wanting similar outcomes for everybody is pretty much the diametric opposite of sane. It fails to acknowledge the statistical spread of abilities even within a protected category, let alone any that might exist between them.
That's not even an exaggeration of the position you are attacking, that's a wilful misrepresentation.
... does not propose [that] men are better suited to X activity or job.
If two things are different (any things not just brains), surely there will be some cases when one works better than another?
So ignoring all of those factors and just focusing on gender is illogical. Especially given that men/women are not all uniform and exhibit wildly different personality and behavioural traits.
If two things are different, and they are a large number of functions. Chances are that they will be functions where thing A is better than thing B, and many where thing B is better than A.
The best non controversial example is height. As we all know, men are on average taller than women. As we also know, that doesn't mean every man is taller than every woman. If you're a man, there is almost certainly a taller woman out there, if you're a woman, there is surely a shorter man.
So if there is a job where height is an advantage, there are two stupid ways to approach this. (A) Since men are taller, only men should be allowed to do the job, (B) Since any gender can have any height, gender distribution in this job must be 50/50.
I claim the right answer is (C), let everyone who is qualified (by height) do the job, and don't be surprised or offended when there is a 80/20 distribution in that work force.
Sex can influence health & disease in many ways, which is why NIH requires that researchers consider sex as a biological variable (SABV) in all stages of research: http://bit.ly/2KXGL7k
Q1. What purpose does a Gender Studies Department serve.
Q2. Why are its teachings based not on science, but apparently on the opposite?
2) It's not based on the opposite. It's based on a superset of factors of which science is just one. We don't interact with other people according to purely scientific algorithms and so dealing with the emotional, political and philosophical aspects are equally as important as the scientific.
If the scientific process does not apply to Gender Studies, that's fine I suppose, it can be considered part of the arts. However, it would be an error to then consider forming policy based on it - similar to forming policy based on music or painting.
In order for us to make policy decisions or recommendations, there needs to be academic rigor, otherwise we may as well be a theocracy.
I know you didn't directly bring up anything about forming policy, so those points aren't necessarily directed at you. I bring them up because I see a lot of material from the field of Gender Studies being used to form policy, law and social expectations.
https://www.aaas.org/programs/dialogue-science-ethics-and-re...
Rather, they are observing that the notion of one sex being biologically "superior" (or at least more suitable for high-prestige roles) has a long and oppressive history in our society, and that incautious "research" can be used to bolster types of sexism that we had hoped were behind us. Indeed, we see this happening on this very site all the time, whenever the topic comes up.
It's not that sex differences might not exist. It's that the instant you publish anything on the the topic, conservatives will inevitably and immediately latch onto it as proof that the traditional gender roles have been correct all along. Even if that's not what the studies show (and there's actually no reason to think they would, as the article points out.)
Basically, the point of feminists is that society is so fraught on this issue, and there's so much latent bias, that it is extremely difficult to perform research objectively, let alone have it be received objectively and proportionately by an audience outside the field.
Saying conservatives support sexist gender roles is like saying liberals support anti-vaxxers - wrong.
That's exactly what global warming skeptics say, along with every conservative that doesn't support one of the non-conservative positions that is associated with science. This is not to say who is right in their accusations, just that it's the same accusation. If you want to disagree with "The Scientific Consensus (TM)" but can't do it on scientific grounds, that claim is automatically the option you have to go with. Of course, it may also be true in some cases.
> Basically, the point of feminists is that society is so fraught on this issue, and there's so much latent bias, that it is extremely difficult to perform research objectively
What does this even mean? Do you think the subject of this article is just unavoidably biased and thus should stop researching? Should people in very obviously left- or right-leaning fields just pack up and quit doing anything? Bye-bye gender studies, I guess?
> let alone have it be received objectively and proportionately by an audience outside the field.
So because some people will twist research for their own ends, we're just what, better off not knowing?
I would say at a minimum we need to proceed carefully, fully understanding the implications and the way results are going to be co-opted.
I think it's outright laughable that a "sex difference in the hippocampal synapse" is going to lead to undermine the basic civil rights we've established.
And if you're so afraid of silly talking-heads alleging something that you hold your science back by decades then I think you're actually giving more power to those talking heads.
Finally, denying the objectively true as opposed to saying "Sex differences exist but we don't like to talk about them" makes you the dishonest side and pushes people like me to the other side.
How about scientists do the research and feminists and conservatives can argue about the conclusions? Some conservatives twist science for their ends, but so do feminists. Not sure why you are just blaming one side.
I can't believe someone is actually justifying banning research.
It just seems like feminists ( a small vocal minority of feminists ) don't want research because the facts will probably go against their political ideology. If they thought the research would support their bias, I suspect feminists would be supporting it.
Your argument reminds me of christian conservatives demanding end to archeological research because facts that researchers dig up might conflict with their worldview.
But there is another options over the apparently impossible goal of researchers being 100% neutral: Everyone acting responsible.
Like Nature not screwing up with this apparently shitty article. Or him Cahill not going to a heavily slanted platform to push his message. And yes, for a lot of researchers that means publishing their findings in a way that makes it harder for motivated actors to abuse it. I understand this is additional work, and likely not fun kind. But especially on currently "hot" topics, this will help us all. Just like we in software should actively try to avoid building the tools necessary for a dystopian future.
On that note, your software development comparison is apt: there are people in software development who explicitly want to build tools that lead towards a dystopia. They just believe it won't be a dystopia.
That sounds indeed like a motivated actor. I'm not familiar with such a case, so lets keep it at that joke response.
> The problem is that many of these motivated actors are in academia.
Science and academia are part of society and thus will always have to some degree follow norms. To think the process of gaining knowledge can be perfectly separated is naive. Resources are limited, so we don't want to support crap science. Attention is limited, so the same is true for magazines. As such, it cannot be avoided to reflect the highly divided political sphere to some degree in science. Trying to minimize this seems good. But the author seems quite fine with getting the outside involved, since he expect it to help him for now.
But these platforms are often the only ones willing to publish unfashionable science of the kind that Cahill is working on.
And if Nature chooses not to publish unfashionable science, then perhaps it is not as neutral as we might think?
> Meghan Daum: Why did you choose to publish in Quillette?
> Larry Cahill: Because the editor asked me. [Others] didn’t ask me. When I contacted Nature saying I felt they needed to do something to undo the damage they had done with that review, they did say I could submit a letter to the editor, but I chose not to do that. But when [Quillette editor Claire Lehmann] asked me to write a piece, I said sure.
I didn't read this as them denying to publish something more extensive because of the topic. They obviously didn't go far beyond that & help him create it, but I'd not expect them to. I do expect this to be something the ideological opposition would do further their agenda. And all I want is people to take responsibility and resist such a deal, unless they actually of what that group stands for. Don't make a deal with the devil. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.
Standard? Probably. Sufficient? Likely not.
Accepting a letter to the editor would give Cahill a platform to share his disagreement, without Nature having to actually admit error or fault. I think that an error like this probably should require some sort of acknowledgement from the original article's authors and/or the editorial staff.
> Don't make a deal with the devil. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.
Quillette is hardly the devil.
Cahill, his platform he publishes on and everyone else is allowed to be biased. Just like feminists and the publications they use are allowed to be biased. For every person who thinks Cahill is dangerous, a lot more think feminists are dangerous. But I wouldn't support silencing feminists, just like I wouldn't support silencing Cahill and stopping scientific research.
If you don't like someone's research or position, then show where the research went wrong. As I said, people tend to support censorship ( especially in research and academia ) when facts and reality go against their worldview. This is true whether it is religious conservatives or feminists.
As for software development, the industry should be politically and ethically amoral. There is nothing ethical or unethical about software. No more than hammer makers are ethical or unethical.
The dyspotian future is being created by authoritarian feminists who want to politicize and censor everything from social media to scientific research. That's what I feel we should be worried about.
> Every comment supporting censorship here is just restating the pro-authoritarian censorship rhetoric. Not a single comment on Cahill's points or research.
Let me repeat: I'm indeed not familiar with Cahill's work beyond this article. The article seems mostly fine, but appears to used by motivated actors to push an agenda. I advocate for people resisting against the latter part. We should generally, within reason, try to be aware what effects we have on society and should try to only change it for the better. Our free society requires a high degree of cooperation and will have a hard time to continue to exist without stuff like that. And would probably be replaced by something more authoritarian.
Thus I find you calling this "pro-authoritarian censorship rhetoric" kinda funny. Are you call it "pro-authoritarian cleanliness rhetoric" when Dr. Peterson advocates for people to "clean their room"? Or is this just a derogatory reaction against something you disagree with?
modern neuroscientists have identified no decisive, category-defining differences between the brains of men and women.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x
1. Articles have been published which claim to identify male-female brain differences.
2. Citing a few specific examples and claiming that the book delves into more, these articles are typically wrong due to innumeracy, bad designs, lack of power, etc. I assume good faith that the criticisms she identifies of the studies in particular are reasonable, mainly because the kind of innumeracy and power issues she identifies plagues all the research I read in other fields and I have no reason to believe quant training or publishing incentives differ materially in neuroscience.
3. Without saying the articles are sexist, the conclusions drawn from the articles have demonstrably been sexist in the past (i.e. moving from claimed differences in grey matter to generalizations about women's aptitude in mathematics)
4. Because we're fairly good at no longer saying women are worse than men biologically, we now say women are different than men biologically. The studies that report this have, according to the reviewer's summary of the book, similar problems.
5. If we assume that the research on biology is incorrect, how do we square that with apparent differences between men and women? Cultural arguments, for which studies are cited.
Again, it is quite possible I am missing the anti-science backdrop of this debate that you seem to be familiar with, but the article you linked does not exhibit those kinds of qualities. It is of typical quality for a review article. The claims made that are heterodox to "mainstream" thinking appear to be grounded in criticisms of science from within science. When I say "much of social psychology is wrong", it's not because I'm an anti-science Freudian or whatever, it's because I'm a scientist and I'm numerate and I know much of social psychology is wrong due to analysis errors, researcher degrees of freedom, fraud, file drawer problems, publication bias, etc. I mean, probably the most direct claim examined in the review article is the reviewer claiming a relevant study found one thing and a subsequent, better-powered meta-analysis found the opposite thing. This is not an anti-science howl, it's literally what we want scientists to do.
Do you think you could do a better job of highlighting the ways in which you feel the article reflects a "flat earth movement"? Again, I'm at a disadvantage here because I haven't read the book being reviewed, but since you have, evidence from the book would be useful too.
I mention this because the Medium article we're all replying to seems to provide... uh... exactly zero references to studies, numeracy, good scientific practice, etc. It seems mostly founded on incredulity that anyone would make the claim you pull-quoted -- actually, even worse, it seems mostly incredulous about the TITLE of the Nature piece. It talks about Gender Studies, and culture war; it repeatedly mentions Quilette but I don't see the mention of any scientific journal after the Nature review piece. He does cite his own experience from all the studying he did.
One of the claims about Gender Studies is that methodologically it, like many cultural studies programs, elevates lived experiences over empiricism. If you're an empiricism, this is scary. But the Medium article has the professor claiming that he knows differences are obvious because he's seen them himself, and so the article which actually discusses empirical results must be wrong...
https://quillette.com/2019/03/29/denying-the-neuroscience-of...
He is misrepresenting the Feminist's position just as much as he is claiming that they are misrepresenting science. Feminism has become the right's new Bogeyman.
It is blatantly obvious what he means by "ideologues".
It is a bizarre collection of malcontents who cannot stop obsessing about trans people.
> Cahill, a professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California at Irvine, is considered one of the world’s leading researchers on the influence of biological sex.
I mean, he doesn't sound like a crank, and he's also written for Scientific American. Does that mean he's acceptable after all?
"Q: Is there a battle between actual scientists and science journalists who may be in thrall to a progressive or woke ideology?
A: No, because most scientists are blissfully unaware..."
As long as scientists stay away from these discussions, the field will be left to "ideologues" as Cahill calls them, i.e. people who either have little knowledge of the subject they're discussing or else have such a strong agenda that it strongly biases their views and prior probabilities.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/opinion/male-female-brain... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x
Of course, so can Cahill. But is there similar evidence that he cherry-picks studies to arrive at predetermined conclusions (not a rhetorical question; genuinely curious)?
He also claims that these "ideologues" have such a strong grip on academia that they will destroy your career if you oppose them: "Senior colleagues warned me as an untenured professor around the year 2000 that studying sex differences would be career suicide." It is smearing, which he offers no evidence for, hoping that the readership will already "know" it is true. Maybe he is right, maybe he is not, I can't tell. If he is right then I hope more neuroscientists speak up about the bullying and that journals like PNAS stops publishing junk science.
Indeed, one of the other studies that he cites in support of his claims used that same data to deconstruct the model. And it really does seem to be as blatantly fudged as he claims:
"Via simulations, we systematically varied sample characteristics such as the magnitude of sex differences and correlations among variables. Some of the simulated scenarios were intentionally unrealistic, involving uniformly strong sexual dimorphism and/or extremely high correlations between variables (up to r = 0.90). Despite this, the proportion of “internally consistent” profiles remained low in all conditions. ... To further reinforce this point, we applied Joel et al.’s methods to facial morphology features in three species of monkeys (crab-eating macaques, grivets, and tufted capuchins). Our goal was to see what percent of individual monkeys would display internally consistent species-typical profiles of features. Across comparisons, only 1.1–5.1% of the monkeys showed consistent “species-typical” profiles ..."
https://www.pnas.org/content/113/14/E1965.full
So it's probably for the best if most scientists ignore Twitter. The occasional article like this one should help, though, if widely reshared.
(Unless you believe that Sweden is just as patriarchal as Saudi Arabia, in which case I guess there is no argument that could possibly convince you.)
Another possible approach is to examine what happens to transgender people after they start taking hormones.
Because the differences between male and female "bodies", meaning anatomical differences like sex characteristics, are obvious and self-evident, while differences in brain structure are not and therefore require careful study.
Further, because there are well-known and deeply entrenched cultural biases that risk derailing this careful study and therefore any initial assumptions that coincide with these cultural biases must be eliminated before serious work can begin.
Finally, because any result that just so happens, completely by chance, and despite the scientists' best effort, to agree with preconceived notions about "how things are" should be considered extremely suspicious and scrutinised again, and again, and again, and again, and noone who really wants to understand the relevant subjects should feel comfortable accepting such results as settled, much less defend them as "scientific orthodoxy".
In other words, because "bias" is as much a problem in science as it is in society, and because in the science of sex differences it is doubly so.
The real problem here isn't the science, is the pseudo-science and the journalism. It's pretty common for people to take single studies out of context and act as if their cherry picked study is the final word. Science journalists are supposed to bridge the gap between experts and laymen, but there seems to be very few good science journalists, and there seems to be lots of hacks and conmen.
That is not my comment. My comment claims that cultural bias can influence the result of scientific studies and we must be vigilant not to let this happen.
Do you disagree?
>> Should the opposite result also be viewed this way?
Does the opposite result coincide with a commonly held preconception?
My comment says what I meant to say. What it doesn't say, I didn't mean to say on the subject. Responses to what I didn't say are none of my business and I won't bother with them any more.
The only reasonable answer is "It doesn't matter." As long as the result is reproducible, coinciding with commonly held preconceptions or not is of no relevance whatsoever. All results need to be equally validated for reproducibility.
Perhaps you didn't realize that going against cultural bias (your term in another comment) make many people uncomfortable.
Why should the result that goes against the commonly held preconception be under greater scrutiny? If any difference would exist in scrutiny, it should obviously ask more from a result that goes against the general preconception.
What you might be missing is that the current leftist consensus dominating western universities is a strong form of cultural bias.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demand...
If the burden of proof is set at the level in which a statement can be made such that there is evidence that cannot be explained by other phenomena then both of you can be correct.
(TBH I don't agree that one level of skepticism should be warranted for all things. If someone claimed P=NP my expectations are significantly higher than if someone claimed that HN commentors primarily comment in English.)
IMO the problem is that it's not 'simply' because the results are inconvenient in one way or another. That seems like a rather handwavy or dismissing cognitive understanding of what the person is saying. In their perception it is because a given conclusion has a known and studied bias- this isn't particularly simple, nor is it about inconvenience. It is that the evidence provided may have caveats that have also been studied that would skew the evidence to be explained by other factors.
This is similar to the claim about the convtroversies behind global warming or antivax, except the amount of evidence is overwhelming such that the scientific consensus of possible skew is extremely low. I don't know (and have not heavily researched) if brain architecture and gender identity and human behavior (as a trifecta) have the same amount of evidence (I was under the impression that the technology to study the brain architecture is new enough that the research hasn't been wholly settled- if this is incorrect let me know).
I wasn't using "simply" to say that explains all objections, I was saying of the objections we should be wary of ones that might be because of confirmation bias, and how that can sometimes lead to apparent lack of consensus where there is one.
That is, if you take the calls for additional scrutiny and filter them to account for confirmation bias, we should consider that outcome as well as how thorough the study was when deciding how much additional confirming reports are required to start considering the results worth mentioning. Surely, if it goes against the common knowledge of a large percentage of the population, that's reason enough to follow up in detail, but we should not shy away from the truth because it is inconvenient, whatever it may be. At to be perfectly clear, this isn't some veiled statement about topics here, it's a general statement about the utility of science and how we can use it effectively to better ourselves.
I'm not always neurotypical in my understanding so please clarify if I'm misunderstanding you: Is your position not that you believe the poster is creating an unfair framework of skepticism on how convenient evidence is?
I didn't describe "the" position, or any single position. That seems to be the crux of misinterpreting my comment.
I should have included it in the reply, but I was responding specifically to the idea, in semi-isolation, of "TBH I don't agree that one level of skepticism should be warranted for all things." and how we should be careful that we don't allow it to go to the other extreme, as (it has for some subset of people) in the example I gave.
> Is your position not that you believe the poster is creating an unfair framework of skepticism on how convenient evidence is?
My point, as it often is, since I find some themes cause me to comment over and over, is that both the extremes of a spectrum are often unappealing but in different ways, and a middle ground is often best. While applying the exact same level of scrutiny to all things isn't useful or efficient, neither is allowing political, economic and cultural narratives to the degree that we never accept results that are "inconvenient" in that they run counter to those narratives. The example given was one where it is inconvenient politically and economically to accept the results of man made climate change. Culturally, that could be results on the effects of marriage, or religion, or lack of religion.
My statement should have been interpreted as a refinement on a specific point, not necessarily supporting or refuting anything absolutely.
I chose the word inconvenient on purpose, to encompass results that are against someone's economic interest as well as those against their specific views on a topic.
It's meant as a general statement about the idea of requiring more or less evidence for specific results, and where I think we should be wary of this going awry.
You may note that I clearly steered my example away from the topic at hand to avoid getting it tied up in a topic that I think is contentious because it affects people's personal interpretation of themselves. I did so by steering it to another charged topic, but one a little less tied to an individual and one that has numerous examples of very thorough science. I'm not sure why I chose inconvenient specifically, other than it encapsulated colloquially what I was trying to express. It's been used for the same purpose previously, and famously so, in "An inconvenient truth", so perhaps that affected my choice.
I get the feeling you really want me to apply the word inconvenient towards the topic at hand and your statement in some way. Honestly, since your comment is mostly about making sure we take it carefully and really understand it, I'm not sure I have a useful way to apply it without being ham-fisted and forcing it, which I would prefer not to do. If I had to apply it towards the topic of cognitive differences between the sexes (or even the races), I would say it applies only inasmuch as if the science disagrees with (or as you state, conveniently agrees with) the popular narratives, we should still look at them closely and follow the science, but we should be careful not to let our preconceptions steer us from changing our view little by little and more evidence comes in. I seriously doubt any neurological differences amount to much in comparison to natural variation and environmental factors, but I also don't think it's fair of me to prevent future people from having a better understanding of how, in general, their neurological processes might differ from other people in positive and negative ways in multiple different aspects, and how to take advantage of or mitigate them as needed.
As an example of this, my oldest daughter has ADHD. In her junior year of high school, she's finally learning techniques to mitigate the problems this causes for her (as well as the benefits), Having an explanation and template for her behavior and how we should interpret it was invaluable to us. It's not perfect (what template could be when applied to an individual?), but it did help us all channel our frustrations into useful life strategies, as parents and for her as a child. If an area of research that yields better understanding of our minds overall hampered because of our inability as a society to accept where it conflicts with our ideas of equality (as weirdly disjointed and unevenly applied as those are), then I think we are all worse off for it.
Stopping people from doing science just because of political ideology, is a very dangerous proposition.
Men and women can have an identical mean across a large number of traits but if the standard deviation is not the same then we can expect large differences at the extremes. This is in fact what we see. Boys' and girls' mathematics scores are pretty much identical at the mean but boys have a slightly higher standard deviation. Boys are thus overrepresented in the 1st and 99th percentiles of mathematical ability.
I think the other problem is that we as society only want to look up, never down. Many feminists demand that we equalize the representation of the sexes in all of the high-paying, intellectual fields (engineering, management, finance) but never in the dirtiest, most dangerous, outdoor fields (mining, logging, fishing, trash collecting) where men are similarly overrepresented.
Regardless of the accuracy - and I definitely have questions about some of the thinking that comes out of that that space - I think it's important to address the arguments people are actually making, rather than others characterizations of those arguments.
It does not necessarily disprove the hypothesis of systematic sexism, but it is an observation which requires explanation.
Update: fixed wording.
For completeness, I would add the "welfare trap" to SkyBelows list, which then pulls in a lot of women. The "bottom" here is not a very comfortable place to look, and involves a sad stories from many different directions. I think one of the ways it reflects in a gendered way is that for men at the lower margins we (i.e. "society") are more likely to say 'you are on your own, deal with it yourself' and for women more likely to say 'we know better, here is what you are going to do'.
I recognize that you are in some sense just the messenger here, but I will just point out that this response appears to use a form of equivocation. Saying that society merely treats people (of both sexes) unequally in gendered ways is not the same as saying that society favors men over women.
This kind of equivocation is what is called a Motte and Bailey[0].
> Perhaps unsatisfying, but they also tend to view it as not their principal priority to fix; which I guess is fair.
Aside from the logical error, I don't mind that they their priority isn't helping disenfranchised men. Indeed, an important requirement to effectively helping people is to keep your scope narrow.
> For completeness, I would add the "welfare trap" to SkyBelows list, which then pulls in a lot of women.
Totally fair.
> The "bottom" here is not a very comfortable place to look, and involves a sad stories from many different directions.
True.
[0]https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey
The original statement is perhaps even more in danger of falling into this and similar logical fallacy - the existence of a subset of disenfranchised men is not evidence against society favoring men generally, while it is evidence against that being universal.
I could also be reading into your words more than is there as a result of my own prior experience.
> It can after all be perfectly consistent to hold both views (i.e. that society treats people in various gendered ways and favors men over women on average) - you just have to be careful about what you are taking as evidence for what claims.
It is possible to both perspectives at the same time, but it seems a bit like addition of epicycles to Ptolemaic cosmology: an post-hoc modification to the general theory without much deeper examination into the inconsistency.
Of course all scientific models are off in some regard, it doesn't prevent them from being useful. But it is good to be aware of the edge cases in our model, in case it turns out we need to update it.
> the existence of a subset of disenfranchised men is not evidence against society favoring men generally, while it is evidence against that being universal.
Let me pose it this way: The question isn't just why are there men who are disenfranchised. If society is systematically biased against women, then why are they disproportionately absent from the lowest tiers?
Allowing for this (indeed proposing it) doesn't require any mental gymnastics at all, merely an allowance for complexity. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying it doesn't even run afoul of Occam.
I proposed one possibility above, in terms of how their issues are dealt with. More generally though, it's not entirely clear that women are absent here - it really depends on how you draw the line "lowest tier". It's true that men are represented more highly in homeless populations (65/35 ish, if I recall correctly) and prisons (even higher). So it is of course interesting to ask why that is. Part of that might be answered by what interventions are available and taken up before that point (e.g. we know there are connections between homelessness and mental health, and we know women, for what ever reasons, are more likely to receive treatment. Are these connected to homelessness stats? Or how much of prison representation relates to prosecution and/or sentencing stats?). We also know most homeless children are with their (majority single) mothers. It's plausible that social programs work a lot harder to get children out of this status, and indirectly their mothers. Not sure what affect that would have on the overall stats.It's much less clear to me that this is a good definition of "lowest tier" though, clearly some prison populations and most/all homeless are in there, but it inclusive enough? What about other populations? Sex-trade workers are disproportionately women, and most of them are very low-status, but relatively few are counted as homeless. Etc. etc. I would have to know a hell of a lot more of the poverty literature before I would be comfortable that I understood where to draw this line.
Anyway we have probably reached the depth of viable conversation in this medium, or close to it. And that on a subject that is difficult to get honest engagement with. Thank you for being reasonable the whole way through, it's rare and I appreciate it.
They are making a trade in exchange for resources. No matter how horrible one thinks that trade is, it would rank as slightly better than the people who don't even have that option.
Of course those in actual enslavement situations are in even a worse position, but you then get into the movement of slaves based on where they can be most exploited and thus gender ratio of slave.
They are different enough that investigators can distinguish the differences in skeletal remains, so I'm not sure that holds.
That careful study has been done. The science is settled, and there to learn for anyone with an open mind.
I somewhat agree with this statement. But judging by the ink spilled over sex differences in places like the New York Times, and by the views on the subject that one is allowed to hold in the polite company of higher education and industry, and by the intensity of the backlash when one publicly deviates from those views: I suspect the "deeply entrenched biases" most significant for present-day researchers lean quite opposite from what you assume.
what burden of proof was required to come to this conclusion and why is that burden so much lower than the one required to conclude there are gender differences in human brains? Liberal universities are some of the most politically-correct, left-leaning bastions in the world. Members are imediately called to resign if they dare state anything against the progressive groupthink [1]. Yet you state as if it were well-established fact that "bias is a problem". this is not even counting the programs, scholarships, and active recruiting for more women in science.
I see 2 problems with accusations of "bias". For one, they're never levelled at an individual so the problem can be addressd at the source. It's always something nebulous, like "bias exists in science". So it's kind of like accusing all scientists of being sexist (or implicitly, male scientists, unless you want to clarify that women, too, are part of the problem), while at the same time accusing none of them. It's a tool that conditions its accused members to atone for something they didn't necessarily do, or if they did at one time, they're never forgiven. It makes everyone in the group feel guilty, regardless of whether they actually did something they should feel bad for.
The second problem with bias is that there's no bar for it "being a problem" ? In otherwords, if "it" exists in even one person somewhere in academia, one time, is it a problem ? If so, how long of a period does there have to be without bias for it to no longer be a problem ? If, say, a CMU professor makes a sexist tweet, how long is there a "sexism problem" at CMU? Forever? Until he is fired? Until he apologizes? None of these terms is defined, because I suspect it's not a problem intended to be solved. It's a social manipulation tool.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/us/yale-lecturer-resigns-...
That seems like a very odd, unscientific position to take. We know that men and women have different physical characteristics and hormonal affects (as an obvious example, women have a menstrual cycle while men do not). Ergo, the hypothalamus and pituitary gland (two areas of the brain which play pivotal roles in the human endocrine system) are structurally different between the sexes; this is obvious and self-evident.
Also, differences between males and females in animals are completely irrelevant for humans, because humans have nothing in common with animals.
Thus spoke the latest science (of 17th century, but who cares, science is still science).
Specifically to his point that:
> the rationale was there aren’t any differences between males and females, so you avoid the unnecessarily complicated feature of the female hormonal cycle and study the male.
In other words...the "settled" science actually excludes the explicit study of, and furtherance of our understanding of, the female brain. Which in turn leads to a lessened ability to treat and address all sorts of conditions.
So by all means decry bias...but be aware that bias can be introduced by scientists wanting to cut corners and make research faster and easier so they can publish more just as much as they can be introduced by gender superiority zealots.
That said, I have to observe that if the matter was settled the way Cahill claims it is, Nature wouldn't be publishing dithyrambs for Ripon's book, and Cahill wouldn't be publishing his own article on Quillete. It would rather be the other way. It's Quillette that's know to court controversy and Nature that's know to be as controversial as a pot of instant noodles.
The categorical denial of neurological sex differences of the sort that was published by Nature does not encourage careful study. In fact, it does rather the opposite by turning the subject into a political football. This distracts from the more important issue that arguably women have been under-served by the medical community precisely due to the denial of such differences.
Bias is a terrible default as it require the other camp to prove a negative.
https://adhd-institute.com/burden-of-adhd/epidemiology/gende...
Meanwhile the kindergarten he'll attend has cut recess to once per day, something like 20-25min, and if they do indoor "recess" due to weather they often just watch a movie. Even if he cools off some by the time he goes, he's gonna need like 4x that much running around outside or in a gym per day, minimum, to not end up medicated or constantly in trouble.
This right here is one of the concrete reasons for why we NEED to recognize neurological sex differences, and have studies that focus specifically on genders. We could discover loads about treatment differences by gender, and really help a lot of people who are suffering from depression (something that is becoming more prevalent by the day).
Some context is needed though. The estrous cycle of dams is fairly complicated[1]. Controlling variables in hormones, hydration, etc. is much easier in bucks. Since the experiments are easier to control for, you need less rodents and therefore you need less funding for rodent care and housing, and you need to sacrifice less rodents to do the experiment (generally). Hence why they have been the 'preferred' rodent sex historically, among many other reasons.
Additionally, rodents are some of the 'first' level in vivo models, but are far from the last in the long line of research that is human applicable. It is very common that research done in rodents will not translate to other mainstay research vertebrates like dogs and monkeys, let alone into humans. The differences in the sexes are vastly outweighed by the differences in species.
Generally, yes, it is good that we are now defaulting to having to use both sexes of rodents. However, costs and sacrifices per experiment have risen as a result. All things have trade-offs in our world.
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=mcgill+pain+mice+research+ma...
[1] https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php/Estr...
That made me chuckle.
IMO, the problem arises in the subjectivity of psycho-metrics, which can be very lackluster tools. IQ, cognitive function, working memory, long term memory, and on and on -much harder to establish a clear difference between these across the two sexes, given with such imprecise and arbitrary measures.
"Rippon does not mention Udry’s work, or its essential replication by Udry’s harshest critic, a leading sociologist who has described herself as a “feminist” who now “wrestles” with testosterone."
But the person in question had this to say:
"This totally misrepresents my re-analysis of Udry data. (I’m the feminist who wrestles with testosterone). Might misrepresent much else as well?"
(https://twitter.com/bjrisman/status/1112534702362165251)