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How Men and Women Badly Estimate Their Own Intelligence
theodp writes "In investigating the question of whether men are smarter than women, British researcher Adrian Furnham came up with some startling results. His analysis of some 30 studies showed that men and women are fairly equal overall in terms of IQ, but women underestimate their own intelligence while men overestimate theirs. Surprisingly, both men and women perceived men being smarter across generations — both sexes believe that their fathers are smarter than their mothers and their grandfathers are more intelligent than their grandmothers. And if there are children, both men and women think their sons are brighter than their daughters."
Why isn't anyone raving about the Twitter feed called Shit My Mom Says?
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Odds are your father or grand father are smarter than their partners. Sure you mom may have a vast wealth of knowledge about shoes or Oprah but that's not of any real use.
I'll have you know that maybe wars are won and lost based upon shoes!
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
IQ is more a measure of your 'working' memory and capacity to quickly understand new topics, it doesn't necessarily to what a person would call 'intelligent'. Allegedly GWBush was has a fairly high IQ (well at least 120+) yet, outwardly at least, he may not seem it.
That intelligence != knowledge
Only recently have we even acknowledged that women are not inherently inferior to men, so is it so much of a surprise to learn that there is a strong cultural gender bias in favor of men being superior in intelligence?
In my own family, my mother is a medical doctor, while my father never made it through college, and despite this reversal, I have caught myself falling into the same traps and patterns that society at large puts out as truth that women are inferior to men in certain fields of study, if not all intellectual pursuits.
both men and women perceived men being smarter across generations
What's important is not reality but our perception of it. Men 1 - women 0.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Men have more variance in IQ, that's why there's more very smart men than very smart women. Of course, there's more very stupid men, which is reflected in crime rates etc.
Research finds that it takes a slashdot drone 23 months to report a story.
Ceci n'est pas une
There are so many theoretical & methodological problems IQ testing. Any analysis with IQ scores as a data set in inherently flawed. Garbage in, garbage out.
I recall reading an article earlier (no idea where it is now) that looked at exactly what the different genders "know" and are "smart at". Men generally fared well in the more science and maths based questions, while women fared significantly better at sociology and understanding emotions in others. Assuming this is true (and it seems accurate based on the people I know) then this may support the "men think they are smarter article". People generally associate intelligence with the sciences, while paying less detail to other parts that make up a persons intelligence. I would say that if the association with sciences and intelligence wasn't there, women would certainly see themselves as being quite smart. After all, how many women would say "oh, yes, my partner is so much better than me when dealing with an emotional crisis over the phone" and by the same token, not many males would say "My partner is certainly smarter than me, she knew just the right thing to say when I was arguing with my brother...".
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Well duh, that's what happens when people grow up in families with 14th-century gender roles. TFA:
Same idea there, and I suppose the divide is exacerbated by pop culture. Women are frequently depicted as being able to succeed based on their appearance as well as more negative traits. Sexual promiscuity is assumed to be a synonym for "empowerment". That moves the focus from intelligence and personality to "I can be rich if I release a sex tape". Even the "wholesome" teenage role model Miley Cyrus has been reduced to pole dancing. It's a shame given the number of female pioneers of geekdom.
Believe it or not, I live with a women and she could care
less about an IQ test. I would also like to go on record as
saying that she is much smarter than me Iloveyouhoney.
Clearly this is the case. Men haven't been able to win domestic arguments since clubbing and dragging was considered a valid way to conduct discourse.
Believing you're smart, and acting on it, can be considered as a claim to an higher amount of psychic territory. Social forces are such that women have been less likely to use intelligence as a basis for this for this, but I think that's changing...but I wonder how a sample of "Mad Men"-era housewives would have treated assessing their own 'prettiness' or 'perkiness' compared with their husbands' self-assessments.
It can also be a tactic for feeling better about your own place in the actual hierarchy, even as it breeds resentment (it doesn't work for me, but I see people seemingly sustained by the 'knowledge' that they're smarter than everyone else).
Women can also be extremely concerned about hierarchy, but again there seem to be differences in how they get their places in it, less 'Look at me, I can make an intensely loud threat-display!' than 'Girls, you all know how much I've groomed all of you....'
But you can't figure out how to log in.
How we know is more important than what we know.
In my own personal findings, I've found that most hyper-intellectuals don't have a lick of Common Sense. It's funny how God works that way. And no, I'm not talking about a brilliant mind with an eccentric tick or two that us lowly 140IQ "idiots" can't even begin to fathom, I'm talking about downright stupidity in some of the most obvious and basic ways.
Take money management for example. Brilliant individual, six-figure salary to boot, and so damn broke he/she can't afford to change their mind. Freaking kills me.
Of course, going along the debt theory, our own Government must be made up of some of the most brilliant minds in the world...
I can post as an Anonymous Coward and claim I have more special powers than Jesus and Superman combined. Naturally, until I prove it, no one would take me seriously.
There may be more to it... Evolutionary pressure pushes men to sleep around, while women are the nest builders, even today. Guys look for young "hot" women and watch a lot of porn (I liked your link to Miley Cyrus pole dancing), because men want to leave their seed with a woman who will be around a long time to raise above-average kids physically (I'll bet her kids will be very healthy and good looking). Men rape women, not the other way around, because it succeeds in spreading their genes more widely, with nothing but a single night's work, while women have to actually birth the child and usually raise them. A lot of this may influence attitudes towards the relationship between men and women. A hot dumb drunk blond really gets my attention at the bars, and I don't think it's just me. And for a guy, I'm a nest-builder.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Another study of teachers, asked to estimate the IQ of their students, found they overestimated the IQ of extroverted kids, and underestimated the IQ of quiet kids. Males tend to be more extroverted than females, so that could explain the perception of males as 'smarter'.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
I've always assumed that my mother was probably smarter than my father, or at least more educated. She went to Princeton, and my dad went to a public school in Florida. She studied Romance Languages, particularly French and Italian, and currently has a masters in Spanish. She used to be an investment banker with a Japanese company, and as she speaks 7 languages, was heavily involved in a lot of deals. My dad was an airline captain for many years, and he's good at maths and stuff though. On my dad's side, my grandfather was a navy pilot with a civil engineering degree, and my grandmother was a calculus teacher though. On my mother's side, my grandfather had a business degree, also from Princeton, and my grandmother was a model, and I don't think she went to college.
So, in my family its evenly matched (and perhaps actually stacked in favor of the women). However, that's just one more anecdote and not a real data point.
Allegedly GWBush has a fairly high IQ (well at least 120+)
(Allegedly there, I FTFY.) That's alleged by people who allegedly have an allegedly low IQ themselves (well at least 80-, allegedly) and will, I allege, show up shortly to allege otherwise. I'll also allege that I'd like to hear what new alleged topics Bush allegedly had the capacity to allegedly understand.
They allegedly always allege that Bush was allegedly smarter than Obama (allegedly our new president, although he allegedly has some alleged paperwork problem allegedly involving his alleged birth in the State allegedly of Hawaii- allegedly one of the States which are themselves alleged to be United- that magically [allegedly] transports his alleged birth to the alleged nation of Kenya as if that would allegedly make them alleged victims even if it were allegedly true in the alleged first place).
Now before anyone allegedly jumps on me, please allegedly remember that I allegedly only alleged these things were alleged, so I'm allegedly sorry.
Surprisingly, [both] men and women perceive men being smarter across generations. Both sexes believe that their fathers are smarter than their mothers and grandfathers are more intelligent than their grandmothers.
The second sentence doesn't necessarily support the first. There's a lot of things that could be going on here, like valuing male relatives more, for example, or the participants' views could be affected by their belief in familial gender roles. Family is special - you can't just say that since people feel this way about their relatives that they feel this way about all men and women.
It might be true, of course, but this doesn't prove it.
When asked this question, Shaw's wife said men were obviously smarter because he married her and she married him.
If you're familiar with the Myers-Briggs/Carl Jung personality type system, I believe it can apply to this discussion, in connecting certain personality types with society's views of "intelligence." For example, I am an INTP (a "Thinker"), and consider myself to be fairly intelligent. Most who are familiar with the system would also agree that INTPs tend to exhibit traits typically viewed as "intelligent." However, I am constantly reminding my girlfriend, who is an ISFJ (a "Nurturer") that she is a very intelligent person. She seems to have an ingrained notion that she is less intelligent than others around her, and a general lack of self-confidence when it comes to intellectual pursuits. She is actually much better than I am at various mental tasks, specifically factual memory, recalling dates, multitasking, numbers, etc. My understanding is that the same societal and environmental influences which contribute to the development of one's personality are the same that give that person their sense of self-understanding, and transitively their sense of self-worth and intelligence. I may have a more developed "intuition" trait, which allows me to make conceptual connections very easily (ie. inventing, engineering, programming), but I will never be quite as good at recalling dates, or at being very aware of my immediate surroundings as she is.
"... they don't do as well at uni any more don't live as long have a weaker immune system and now they think they are smarter! the over paid evolutionary throwbacks, why don't we get rid of them all and move on as a race" I hate articles like this, there are so many, and yes I am a man, Until we start treating each other (the sexes) as equals, and recognising the differences (there are some) then we cant move on and away from the inequality of the past. this kind of sensationalist journalism, just polarises the sexes. I meen the title says it all, "he's not as smart as he thinks" so provocative where they could have gone for the more positive "she underestimates her intelligence" - but this is less catchy
Stop right there.
Exactly what part of Miley Cyrus is "wholesome"? There's so much psycho-sexual pathology going on in the whole Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus phenomena that I'm betting there will entire textbooks written on the topic.
There will be an entire appendix just on Billy Ray Cyrus' uber-mullet vs Hannah's hooker wig.
The Miley Cyrus sex tape will be released in 3...2...1...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think in general, people perceive that bolder, outspoken people are smarter - as if their boldness comes from understanding and knowledge. I also think that men (by virtue of testosterone) tend to be bolder than women. This get misperceived as intelligence, thus men are generally perceived to be more intelligent.
we go out of our way to always make it sound like the sexes are equal. We can't ever just say a negative we have to find some way of qualifying it. For example the article says that men are better at spatial recognization but then says but women are better at "emotional intelligence". Since when is emotional a type of intelligence? The way I've seen the term used it has been to mean being able to correctly identify what you or others are feeling. Well good for you. It is similar to awarding points for being able to identify smells. "Sure your son is as dumb as a brick but his aroma intelligence is off the charts."
Also, they can't say that the way an average man thinks makes him more suited for work life and the way a woman thinks makes her more suited for nurturing tasks. When they want to say something like that they have to find a way around it by saying something like "men tend to have a logical/rational thinking process, whereas women tend to have a more empathetic thinking process". emotion != intelligence/reasoning. One is subjective and one is objective. I can reason with you and prove that my ideas are right, however I can't ever prove to you that my feelings are right. One way you are open to being persuaded the other way you just state that you have a right to feel that way and so what you've chosen to do is right.
These are also obviously averages. I personally think my mother is more intelligent than my father, even though my dad finished highschool and my mother dropped out. Similarly in university I took physics and I think the girls in the class were on average smarter than the guys. This could be due to a selection bias though: for a girl to go into physics she has to overcome the society stereotype that it is a men's profession and women can't do it, so it could lead to only the most gifted women trying the field.
The idiot is called an idiot for a reason. You don't walk up to someone who spends their spare time lighting their farts and ask them to assess anyone's intelligence, least of all their own.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
That's what she said! Uh, you said. Hmm, works either way.
One possibility is that men really are smarter, just that IQ tests don't measure the most important aspects of intelligence.
Homo Sapiens are high end apes that have evolved some crucial abilities. The most important ability of all is the ability to use tools.
Even more important than that is the ability to INVENT NEW TOOLS. Our entire civilization exists because of bright men in the past who invented and engineered the technology we have today. Ironically, civilized trappings such as feminism and political correctness are only possible at all due to technology.
Anyways, as far as I know, men have done around 95-99% of the inventing. Correct me if I'm wrong. Furthermore, in many situations in real life, it's usually a male co-worker that invents a new solution to a technical problem. IQ tests can only measure the ability of a person's brain to apply existing, canned solutions to problems.
I have to wonder how much a person's self-esteem has to do with their self-perception. I usually don't think that people with externally-visible low self-esteem are terribly bright. People who are unable to address and/or deal with their inner troubles, for instance, get a very low rating with me. More commonly than not, these "frail" people tend to be women, in my experience (though there are certainly some strong ones). Kinda interesting looking at these observations in writing, and thinking back to how things "used to be" where women were considered the weaker sex - not as mentally bright, not as intrepid, etc. (Contrary to the status quo belief of the 'sexism' of yore, the 'weakness' of women was generally considered to be mental/emotional, not physical.)
Also, testosterone (resulting in an more forward inner drive) probably has something to do with it, I imagine. If someone is driven, they are more likely to manifest their dreams, or to even have those dreams. From what I've seen, guys with more testosterone are not only more extroverted and have higher self-esteem, but also tend to accomplish more than their peers if they're the least bit intelligent.
I've got two children - a daughter, 3, and a son, 6. I don't think my son is more intelligent than my daughter, and don't necessarily think the inverse is true, either. I'm unsure due to age and gender related development. I do know that my daughter tends to learn better: she listens more carefully, and is generally more attentive to what's being told to her. But she's also nowhere near as headstrong or driven as my son, either.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
"14th-century gender roles"
Mankind didn't evolve in the 14th century. Mankind evolved over millions of years. Feminists, today, are trying to redefine what men and women are. They blame culture for all the differences between men and women. But, various drugs have measurable different effects on males and females. Similar experiences in sports have vastly different results on their bodies. No matter how much some would like to pretend that there is no difference between men and women, it remains a fallacy.
As for intelligence - I've read many an article over the years, both before and after the advent of the internet. More women's intelligence are closer to the center of any scale, while more men are found at the far ends of any scale. Meaning, an idiot is more likely to be a male, and a genius is more likely to be a male.
Granted, IQ tests reflect whatever the authors consider to be important. Design a test that places greater importance on remembering actor's names, recognizing colors, remembering details of friend's and family's vital details, women will almost ALWAYS score higher than men. Design a test that places greater importance on spatial recognition, mechanical skills, and computing RBI's and such, men will almost ALWAYS score higher.
Gender roles? Since we've spent millions of years LEARNING our gender roles, I see nothing wrong with them. They work. They have ensured the survival of our species all this time.
Go ahead - mess with the roles, and teach the kids new ways. Tell the little girls that they don't have to be little girls, and little boys don't have to grow up to be men.
Has anyone noticed that the most "modern", "advance", "civilized", and "liberal" nations in the world have a decreasing fertility rate, while the barbarians continue to breed? Has anyone noticed the invasion of those "civilized" nations taking place all around us?
Let's wait another 100 years or so, and see how this all works out. Change those roles, and experiment, while the rest of the world retains the old roles. Don't be at all surprised if the Muslims and the Catholics inherit the world. The old fashioned roles WORK! Damn fools.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You just blew my mind. My girlfriend probably thinks I'm retarded!
While I agree Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper are important pioneers, I'm not sure it's a particularly large number--- you've right there, with your 2-entry list, basically exhausted the list of prominent female pioneers of geekdom, while the equivalent male list (Alan Turing, Steve Wozniak, Donald Knuth, Edsger Dijkstra, ...) goes on for a while longer. Sure, there a few others once you move down the list into "famous among specialists"--- Radia Perlman (inventor of the spanning-tree protocol), say. But you can't even put together a list of 20 without digging pretty deep.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I recall my grandfather having farting competitions with his friends one Christmas.
However, I'd certainly consider the man "smart" or even a "genius". Not too great at book smarts (well, mathematics, at least). But the man was a genius in his own right: an incredible artist (oils on Masonite, having paintings sell for millions), an Expert marksman when he shot for the Army Rifle Team (they asked him to go to the Olympics), a phenomenal outdoorsman (if it exists, he probably knew its name, scientific name, what it ate or ate it, etc.), and a poet/singer who knew thousands of lengthy songs and poems by heart (including Horatius and many of his own).
But yeah, he liked lewd jokes and fart competitions. That, alone, doesn't make someone dumb.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
We don't even have a very good definition of "intelligence". How can you measure something when you can't even define it?
"smart" and "intelligent" aren't necessarily the same thing. Even a moron can "outsmart" a genius, if the moron just learns how to scam people. Been down to the ghetto lately? Do you think all those hustlers are freaking GENIUSES???
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Yes it damn well does!
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
And there you have proof that men are not smarter than women. We all want sex, but if women will have it with us, most of us consider that a "negative trait" [ though I certainly don't if any hot geek girls out there want to get their freak on ;-) ]
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
... and on Slashdot they are likely to be the same person!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I think the real reason men feel they're more intelligent than women can be summed up in two words: "Twilight Saga".
So how comes that in every group with about the same number of males and females, the average number of sexual partners of the opposite sex is the same for males and females?
(And yes, this is a statistical necessity, no point in arguing against. To be more specific, if there are m males and f females in a group, then the average number of sexual partners of the opposite sex for a male is f/m times the average number for females.)
So the evil liberals and their oppressive egalitarian agenda are leading to the downfall of society and the invasion of Muslim barbarians? Did you forget to take your medicine today?
But yeah, he liked lewd jokes and fart competitions. That, alone, doesn't make someone dumb.
Lighting farts does though. You an injure yourself badly doing it.
I never said lewd jokes made one "dumb". I used lighting of farts as an example of something an idiot would do. The rest of your spiel about your granddad was touching but irrelevant. I don't know the man but wouldn't call him an idiot based on what little you've told me about it.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
so what? The median number can easily be 0. If I'm in a town with 10 women and 9 men and I screw all the women and the 9 guys are priests or just don't get any, the average is 10, but that doesn't actually mean a thing.
Reboot macht Frei.
I disagree that defined gender roles are a good idea. Ignoring the concept of sexual discrimination entirely, they by definition reduce every single person's career choice by 50%.
Also, notice how the barbarians tend to starve and die of disease a lot, largely due to their overbreeding?
I assume that you were going for funny, but from tfs:
British researcher Adrian Furnham came up with some startling results. His analysis
and from tfa:
I just let the data speak for itself. Nonetheless, sometimes I think you have to be stupid, brave or just plain naive to work in this area.
open source modern art: laser taggi
geez, did you even read the post? He's saying that if we spend all our energy worrying about gender roles and ignore that they actually work, the traditionalists will eat our lunch. I tend to associate a higher standard of living with lower birth rates, as recent research shows that one of the main reasons for the lower birth rate in western nations is access to birth control: urban living and mechanized farming mean that there's less need for tons of kids.
Reboot macht Frei.
There are different sets of mental abilities that people of both genders have, and while some people will be very strong in some, they also can end up very weak in others. It is also the perception of the word "intelligent" that can also differ from person to person, or from ethnic group to ethnic group. As a result, you can have people who score very high in certain types of tests, yet if you throw them into an unusual situation, they won't have the slightest idea how to handle it.
The ability to come up with solutions to different problems is the perfect example of this. You can take someone with amazing abilities in mathematics or physics, but they might not be able to come up with a good solution on how to improve the functional efficiency of a business, group, or come up with other solutions outside their area of expertise. In this regard, their high intelligence is limited to a narrow area.
Being able to evaluate problems with systems of doing things may also be an area where people considered to be intelligent might have trouble, but at the same time they can handle very advanced scientific problems quickly and easily. A part of this is that people tend to either focus on specifics, or generalities. While some will really dig deep to find a detailed solution to a problem thrown at them, others will look at the situation from a "big picture" perspective and figure out a USE for what the detail oriented people come up with. Women and men both have the ability to fall into either group, but this idea that intelligence can be easily evaluated without looking at other mental strengths and weaknesses of the individual is what is flawed.
You can also break things down into areas such as memorization ability, the ability and speed to learn a new concept, and the ability to analyze and apply knowledge to various very different situations. If you take some Math majors from MIT and try to throw them into a situation that calls for a solution that does not call for a mathematical solution, would they be able to find the solution? Knowledge and Wisdom.....one is how much a person knows and can recall, and the other is the application of knowledge. One without the other tends to be fairly useless, but without wisdom, knowledge becomes useless. How many people do YOU consider to be idiots because they can't come up with good solutions to problems, even though they have very obvious mental strengths? It also requires a certain type of thinking to see systematic flaws in different areas, and it is unfortunate that many people don't understand this.
And finally, it takes the cooperation of DIFFERENT people with different mental strengths to come up with solutions to many things. The problem is that too many people fail to see their own weaknesses, and where they NEED the help of people with a very different way of approaching problem solving.
I can't believe you were modded up so far.
Are men and women innately different? Yes. Does that have any relevance in terms of modern society? Probably. Do their ideal roles in any way reflect their current societal roles? Not in any way shape or form.
There is one reason, and one reason only that you didn't see women in higher education before this past century: childbirth. Not child rearing, not pregnancy. Childbirth killed most women before they reach 30. Men, on the other hand, so long as they were kept out of the {mines, war, boats, etc.} would likely live to a ripe old age. These evolutionary pressures are gone, as are most of the unskilled tasks usually reserved for women. (You don't believe that, try doing laundry by hand. It's practically a full time job in and of itself.)
Keeping women in their old roles as housekeepers is a massive waste of brain power. By your (bullshit unverified) claim that women are average and men are at the extremes, it doesn't matter. In fact it's likely that genius and idiot alike are unsuited to making advances in the new era, which rely on hours and hours of work by large teams of people. Both geniuses and idiots work badly on teams.
But in any case, the issue of childbirth is the only reason for the old roles. We've solved that problem, and it's time to redefine the roles.
I suppose you could be purposely obtuse and come away with that! I think it's fairly clear that if most jobs can be done by men or women and the society treats women as "equivalent" to males then most women will chose to work rather than have children. Since doing a good job raising children is WAY more work then most 20th century jobs, it's understandable. If your mom didn't have at least 2.1 to 2.3 children, assuming a developed country, then she contributed to the decline of your ethnicity. This has a number of consequences including the difficulty in funding retirement programs, like Social Security and Medicare, and replacing workers as the workforce ages.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
I actually don't entirely disagree with your post, but feel the need to object to a few key points. First, something I do agree with:
Quite honestly, I agree: Looking at a broad, statistical picture, men and women tend to be different.
Where I strongly object is moving from there to saying that every individual man and woman should conform to those gender roles; shouldn't be allowed to deviate from the statistical average.
And yet, civilization itself is a glorious testament to the idea that we don't always need to fall into the instinctual patterns of behavior that served us so well on the savanna. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with a woman choosing to stay home and raise the kids while her husband goes out and make money, there's nothing wrong with the reverse, either. (Or with a woman staying home while her wife goes out to earn money. Or both partners doing some share of child-raising and money-earning.)
The point of feminism is not to redefine what men and women are. It's to expand egalitarian ideals. That, maybe, when prejudging individuals based on race, or religion, height, disability, whatever is a poor way to run a society, that idea should also apply to prejudging men and women.
And while you're right, there are feminists who claim culture to be 100% responsible for gender differences, that brand of feminism is falling out of style with younger feminists. Because little girls don't have to grow up to be women, nor little boys men. Most will - almost all, certainly - and that's perfectly fine. But to encourage children to conform, to confine their horizons to what we're "evolved" to expect, seems tragic and an absolutely criminal way to raise a child.
Quite frankly, it's the same type of thinking that says boys should be out playing "healthy" sports, not inside playing fantasy make-believe with wizards and dragons. It's always easy to redefine what being a "real" man or woman means to suit an individual's values, which is why I so strongly believe that it's a dangerous road to travel to say girls need to be girls and boys need to be boys, end of story.
He presents it as a paradox that, on the average, people believe that their mothers were less intelligent than their fathers, and their grandmothers less intelligent than their grandfathers.
However, it is no paradox for men to be more intelligent than the women they marry (on the average), even though men and women have the same average intelligence. This merely requires that women tend to marry men more intelligent than they are, while men tend to marry women less intelligent than they are.
Of course, this give problems at each end of the scale-- men at the low-intelligence end of the scale and women at the high intelligence end of the scale both will tend to be unmarried. I'm not sure that this isn't the case, though!)
(Actualy, since the survey was of the children, not the actual couples, the statistics quoted will still be reasonable if, on the average, when a higher-intelligence women marries a lower-intelligence man they have fewer children than when a lower-intelligence woman marries a higher-intelligence man.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Well that depends on the IQ test and what the article means by language development and emotional intelligence, maybe he implies that men and women do better at certain questions in the test?
There probably will never be a female championship rodeo contestant.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't ever be allowed to try.
The entire philosophy of modern feminism isn't this parody of the 60's women's liberation movement, it's the shocking concept that women are people too, and they should be given the same opportunities to try and fail at anything a man can.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Don't forget that in the United States, some 60% of male babies undergo brutal genital mutilation, and nobody gives 2 shits. Female genital mutilation is thoroughly illegal, regardless of any and all cultural, religious, or imagined justifications (as it should be). Slicing off bits of babies is allowed and even encouraged as long as they are male babies.
And you seem to be anonymous. He's right, religious people are beasts. Their cries were enough to get me temporarily banned from Slashdot. The Slashdot brass have also hidden from everybody the fact that I am a paid subscriber. They have also disabled my ability to post anonymous posts and journals, even though I have excellent karma.
So yes, religious people are beasts. It's a shame they continue to run on the inertia of past human ignorance. In any sane society they'd all be rounded up and turned into Soylent Green.
Even the "wholesome" teenage role model Miley Cyrus has been reduced to pole dancing.
I can't see how she was ever a "wholesome" role model. Even before she started dancing around half naked, she encouraged young girls to base their self esteem on good looks and their parents wealth.
IQ tests can be biased and based on knowledge and wisdom instead of intelligence and potential to learn or think.
For example people here on Slashdot, we are very good with computers and technology, we find managers and rich people are not as smart with computer as we are. But while we consider rich business people to be stupid, they find us to be stupid when it comes to business and business decisions just as we find them stupid when it comes to computers and technology decisions. The thing is that everyone is intelligent at at least one subject, maybe even more. Even if it is street maintenance that only an autistic person is good at, they are intelligent at that if nothing else because they really have a passion for street maintenance or whatever their interests are. Usually one is intelligent at their interests, and the average Slashdot readers are good at math and science and computers because of their interests, and the rich business people are good at investing, finances, accounting, and turning over a profit. The Dotcom busts showed us that when computer people try to run a business without any business classes or experience, they tend to fail just as bad as the business person who tries a computer business but lacks the computer knowledge.
Men and Women have different interests and are intelligent at different areas. It even goes by political party as liberals are usually better in liberal arts and science than business management and accounting, while conservatives are better in business management, finances, and investing than liberal arts and science. I think it is the right brain verses the left brain, as people like me want to try and balance out the usage of the brain to use both sides.
But my theory is that everyone is intelligent at least at something. The people that score low in IQ tests are usually smart at stuff the IQ test doesn't cover like NASCAR, the WWE/TNA Wrestling, TV shows and movie trivia, culture, traditions, social skills, etc. So one person's idiot is another person's genius so to speak.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Smart men build weapons.
Smart women know not to use them.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
That's the point. The females' accomplishments were pretty damned impressive given the entrenchment of traditional gender roles. They deserve a higher weight, or at least a more fair metric than M/F ratio.
Ask any parent and you will get the incredibly obvious answer. Children are expensive in affluent countries and there you also get differences depending on the cost of living. The birth rate in Japan is less than Kansas.
It's possible that I overstated my case. I don't intend to tell any woman that she may or may not do any job at all. Nor, men.
What burns me up is the push by the liberals to have our school systems working hard to OVERTURN all the role models we've learned. I've actually counseled young men and women that they SHOULDN'T get married and have kids as soon as they graduate from school. (Either high school, or college) I've encouraged them to explore the world, to try different jobs, to get some "life experience" before they are tied down to half a lifetime of raising kids.
Yes, some of the more outrageous claims that boys and girls are just alike, and that they can do exactly the same things, yada yada yada are getting discredited. Finally. I've been hearing that trash for decades.
Your parenthetical (Or with a woman staying home while her wife goes out to earn money. Or both partners doing some share of child-raising and money-earning.) You lose me with that. Homosexuality is a dead end, and it contributes to those more traditional groups gaining more and more strength, relative to the "civilized" nations and cultures. Gay marriage and the declining fertility rates go hand in hand. Whether it is causative or not, the correlation is there.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The fact that half of our society got pissed off and demanded equal rights makes it plainly obvious that they don't work. "Works" does not mean "pumps out as many babies as fast as possible at any cost".
Men are supposed to be the ruler - even though that has been wildly politically incorrect to say, its still coded in our genes.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Actually, women allow men to think they are smarter
Everyone knows that women rule the world
Men are easily persuaded to do what their better half tells them to
Personally, I prefer women's company over that of men
They are much smarter and their knuckles don't drag the ground like most men's do
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
And a very narrow-minded measure of intelligence.
Take what ye can. Give nothing back!
Exactly! I'd say that the concept of intelligence is really just a human cultural convention. It has no objective reality.
"Why would a woman pick a mate she believed was stupid?"
Wealth and power come to mind.
Gender roles and gender rights are not the same thing.
Now I think I'm above average 1/2 of the time.
San Francisco Photographers
no, it means that it leads to a functioning society. Sure, it's not equitable, but it works. Cry at the injustice, but don't shut down the works while you wring your hands over most women raising kids while the hubby pulls in the bucks.
Reboot macht Frei.
^ Deary, I.J.; Irwing, P.; Der, G; Bates, T.C. (2005). "Brother-sister differences in the g factor in intelligence: Analysis of full, opposite-sex siblings from the NLSY1979". Intelligence 35:451-456.
There you go, have a citation for male IQ results having a higher variance than female.
What, you want an online ref? Here's one about math tests
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121691806472381521.html
The neurological basis appears to be that males have more pruning during the final stages of brain formation. This can result in more efficient pathways, but has less redundancy.
It's quite possible that the others were just out of matches....
But you do bring up an interesting point. Is IQ related to crassness? I rather suspect not. I work with some very bright engineers who probably wouldn't be able to speak if it wasn't for swear words. Having a high IQ does not put one in the enlightened arena, it simply means that one is gifted at solving problems or remembering things or synthesizing information. It has absolutely no bearing on how you live life and the quality of human being you are.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
So, where's the funny part?
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
I don't know if anyone keeps stats on the male/female membership for Slashdot, but I'm guessing relatively few women would find themselves interested in taking part in what is essentially an intellectual pissing contest. Doesn't mean they're not smart, just means they don't feel the need to beat their chests and try to be the intellectual 800 lb gorilla in the forum.
..this sounds just like a man trying to be 5 IQ points smarter than he is! Wait, can't be, that would be too ironic
These kinds of articles are always just troll bait. We now live in a male bashing society that is constantly trying to show how men are not really smart, and that women are really the smart ones. I suppose that we can say that this one isn't so bad because at least it claims we are women's peers. While there very well may be an intelligence difference between men and women, there is enough environmental difference that one is unlikely to be able to find it even with the best of tests.
The biggest factor is that if you take any group of people and split them into two groups. One gets taught that they don't have to provide for themselves, so anything they accomplish is just for their own gratification, and the other is taught that no one is ever going to hand them a free lunch, so they better figure out how they will support themselves, I think we can all figure out which group is going to end up smarter.
It is made abundantly clear to very small children that men need to earn their livings, and women earn a living if they want to. Even in today's society, little girls are informed that they can marry/sleep their way into being supported. No doubt, there will be a certain percentage of people that will end up dumb even if they believe they will need to support themselves, and some people will end up smart even if they don't NEED to be. The reason that it appears that there are more smart men then women isn't because women are not given credit. It isn't because evil men keep them down. It is because the group of smart women consist of the women that WANT to be smart, and the group of smart men include the men that WANT to be smart combined with the group of men that feel they NEED to be smart for survival. It should be no surprise that you get better results from the group that needs it for survival.
If women want to become men's intellectual peers, they need to start sleeping with men for their looks instead of their wallets. They need to make sure that starting at a young age, little girls are taught that they should pay for everything when they date men. Both young boys and young girls need to be taught that it is a woman's responsibility to financially support men, and that if a man supports them financially, the woman is a bum, and unworthy of being in a relationship.
Get these ideas instilled in our youth, and you will see more smart women and fewer smart men.
A functioning society which due to purely internal factors lead to a change in it which, according to you and the OP, will ultimately lead to its downfall. Yeah, that sounds real fucking functional.
I've been watching this topic for a few hours and if nothing else, it's entertaining to see the more inflammatory posts rise and fall and rise and fall again. Someone should perform a study on it and tell us what it means.
Speaking of purposely obtuse - I did indeed write what haruharaharu said. My country is being invaded by illegal aliens, and so are most European countries. While our societies are preoccupied with gay marriage, women's rights, and assorted other narcissistic endeavors, Islam and Latin America are taking over.
And, the navel gazer societies are impotent to stop them.
Of course, impotence is fashionable in our countries today. No big deal though. Our descendants will likely become concubines, whores, and slaves to the descendants of the invaders. That's one way to pass on your genes, I guess.
Try this story on for size: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/12/04/mexico.slave.labor/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If a man speaks in the forest and there are no women around, is he still wrong?
Right. Given a silly comment of one's own, the men say "Duh" to you, while the women say "Duh" *to each other behind your back*.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
nobody said that. All the OP said was that contemplating your navel too much is dangerous.
Reboot macht Frei.
Can I get a citation for your assertion that geniuses are unable to work cooperatively with other people? I find that hard to believe.
SRSLY.
"... Surprisingly, both men and women perceived men being smarter across generations -- both sexes believe that their fathers are smarter than their mothers and their grandfathers are more intelligent than their grandmothers. And if there are children, both men and women think their sons are brighter than their daughters."
The use of "believe is correct; the use of "think" is not.
The number of humans that can actually think, as opposed to rationalize, compared to the total number of humans, appears to be statistically insignificant.
Ummm... no. You're wrong. Absolutely fucking retardedly wrong. Women breed MUCH more often than men, and much more successfully. We wouldn't exist as a species if most women didn't successfully reproduce:
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-anything-good-about-men-and-other-tricky-questions/
Really... killing most women before 30? Where did that stupidity come from? Childbirth did not oppress women. Men died by the scores in wars, and just general work, much more so as a percentage of the population than women did.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Maybe if you read the post in a grossly implausibly optimistic manner. But luckily the OP himself has seen fit to kindly elaborate on his views. It's rather difficult to interpret "Our descendants will likely become concubines, whores, and slaves to the descendants of the invaders" as anything but claiming society is thoroughly fucked (and also that the OP is a fucking lunatic).
I've seen male engineers that can barely tie their shoes and women that can write beautiful essays in perfect grammatical English and yet can not navigate across town without a GPS system. How can you accurately access intelligence when it manifests itself in so many different ways?
There's a very simple answer tho this difference that is quite probably right: the definition of intelligence used by the sample (that is, by the general population) is not the same one used in IQ tests. That, which shounds quite likely at first glance, would perfectly explain these "surprising" results. It would be enough that the laymen definition of intelligence strongly weighted skills that men have more often than women (such as those related to spacial composition, manually building or fixing things or understanding mechanical processes) while giving less weight to those more frequent in women (like managing complex processes, understanding people's mental state or recalling ordered information) and have those skills weighted differently in the technical definition of IQ, and the results could easily be as observed. Personally I find the definition often used in such tests (the capability to solve complex problems) useless. And no, I do not consider that other definitions that reflect things such as social skills or artistic abilities as valid. What is missing in the definition, IMO, is the ability to FORESEE AND AVOID problems. An intelligent person not only solves problems, is also good at not getting into them. And that's completely missing in any IQ evaluation I've seen. While I personally score high in IQ tests (130 on average, though I've been rated everything from 120 to 145) I thing I would do worse if such capabilities were considered, and I think that would better reflect my real intelligence. Not that I'm dumb as a rock, but I'm not as well adapted for this "living" thing as my IQ would indicate.
It depends on if I've had my morning caffeine or not.
Can you point to any studies showing that morning coffee makes you a genius? ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
With statistics. Is there anything they can't do?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
> His analysis of some 30 studies showed that men and women are fairly equal overall in terms of IQ Actually, when the IQ test was first created men scored higher and the test was considered biased towards men. This was then changed so that the bias would be removed so, men and women are fairly equal because the test was designed to be that way. However, men still have a greater variance than women, even in on average they're both the same.
Meh, that does sound a bit loony; i'm not really worried about invading moors (that didn't work very well in europe), but china seem like the sort of country to watch closely.
Reboot macht Frei.
Men rape women, not the other way around,
Are you sure about this?
because it succeeds in spreading their genes more widely, with nothing but a single night's work, while women have to actually birth the child and usually raise them.
Looking here, that seems to be a bit of a fringe theory, ie, not well supported or generally accepted (myself, I still find it rather curious that it's generally considered to be more about power (and anger apparently) than about sex).
Do us scientists a favor and leave the discussion of scientific topics to those that understand them. You have managed to grasp the basics of evolution, yet have failed to understand the greater scope of the term 'survival of the fittest'. I'm guessing you tuned out right after learning enough to form an excuse for your behavior.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Thanks for the reply. I think our disagreement stems in large part from trying to find the balance between acknowledging and accepting general statistical differences and encouraging any individual to reach their full potential. As such, when you say...
...I'm worried you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because it is possible that any particular girl can be just as smart/strong/tall/whatever as an particular boy. How do we, as a society, respect that? To not make outliers of either gender feel like freaks for being taller than women "should" be or short than men "should" be?
On the issue of homosexuality (which I readily acknowledge I introduced to the discussion) I'm not sure what you mean by "Homosexuality is a dead end." I assume you mean that, genetically, homosexuality does not contribute to the propagation of the species, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
Assuming that is your position, though, my response is a resounding "So what?"
No one is encouraging children to be homosexual. What is happening is that some (myself included) are promoting a viewpoint that homosexuality is no worse than heterosexuality, meaning people who are gay anyway should be just as respected members of society as people who are not.
Obviously, I'm in the 'homosexuality is not a choice' camp, but my position wouldn't change if it were definitively proven that it were a choice.
As to declining fertility rates, I won't pretend they aren't happening (Google's public data gathering has great graphs) but it corresponds pretty well with inflation adjusted minimum wage, too... I'm not arguing the two have anything to do with each other, but it seems just as likely as the specter of gay marriage.
It's a shame given the number of female pioneers of geekdom.
From your second link:
Shouldn't this "cancel out" any other achievements she had? Because according to Edsger Dijkstra, "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.", and I'd imagine that creating it (regardless of how impressive that is) would be a bit worse than merely teaching it.
Ridiculous. This is a great post, and nails the point of TFA right on the head.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Evolutionary pressure also pushes women to sleep around.
A women finds a guy who is a good provider. Has a child with him to cement the relationship then attempts to get pregnant by other men, often the exciting warrior type who does not make a good provider.
She ends up with a bigger variety of children
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
describes her degree as a "science degree" to avoid scaring men away. She has a degree from one of the top colleges in the world.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Hyperbole fail on your part. I can now post anonymously, but I cannot write in my journal. I hope that the journal snafu is a temporary result of web development.
It goes beyond the stereotypes, because men tend to be more physically abusive while women tend to be more socially abusive. It's much easier to get evidence of the former, and there's a bigger stigma associated with it. Women are as likely to be abusive as men, but the kind of abuse they're likely to indulge in is not so obvious to a court of law or a jury. This tracks with developmental psychology's learning about children: as boys grow toward puberty they tend to be physically agressive, while as girls grow toward puberty they tend to be socially agressive. In both cases, there are people who never grow out of it.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Has anyone noticed that the most "modern", "advance", "civilized", and "liberal" nations in the world have a decreasing fertility rate, while the barbarians continue to breed? Has anyone noticed the invasion of those "civilized" nations taking place all around us?
Uhhh... have you also noticed the shockingly high rates of disease, starvation, and infant mortality in some of these very same nations with insane birthrates?
The best article by far on what makes well educated women tick is this classic: http://www.martynemko.com/articles/men-as-beasts-burden_id1228
[quote]Are men smarter than women? No. But they sure think they are. [/quote]
The author of this article is a woman, hence introducing gender bias.
The thing is, these roles worked because of what types of skills were mainly needed to feed, clothe, and a put a roof over the head of the family. The roles consisted first of hunting and killing and morphed into hard manual labor. Now, we are at a point in time where those manual labor jobs are decreasing and jobs where physical attributes like strength and speed are meaningless. An increasing number of jobs are "Mind (or mindless" work. There is no difference between a man and a woman in these positions. Mom going to work and making boatloads of money because she is brilliant while dad stays home and does housework isn't going to cause the downfall of civilization.
Keep in mind that tests from other eras (let's say the 80s and backwards, just for simplicity) were significantly skewed towards male-oriented views of intelligence. I'm not saying they were sexist: Just that in some cases the men writing the tests couldn't conceive how the correct answer could be other than the one they intended. We have a lot more studies now showing different methods of thinking, and a lot more respect for intelligence in social situations as well as academic ones. My mother, for example, scored 78 on an IQ test back in the 1970s, despite a grade average of A's and B's. Her most recent attempt at an IQ test landed her somewhere in the 130 range, I think. Her teacher back in 70-something told her the the test was total bunk and to ignore it, because he intended to.
It's not just limited to IQ tests, but essentially, generations of women have grown up thinking they're less "intelligent" than men... but with a very academic definition of intelligence.
If someone wants to launch a counter-study, try replacing the term "intelligence" in this study with "common sense". I'd be willing to bet the results would be sharply reversed, even among men reporting their own levels of "common sense". Just a hunch.
Me specifically? No. But in terms of caffeine providing a general cognitive boost:
Caffeine's effects on true and false memory.
Capek S, Guenther RK.
Sensitivity to change in cognitive performance and mood measures of energy and fatigue in response to morning caffeine alone or in combination with carbohydrate.
Maridakis V, O'Connor PJ, Tomporowski PD.
[The effects of energy drinks on cognitive performance] [Article in Dutch]
van den Eynde F, van Baelen PC, Portzky M, Audenaert K.
Just to name a few : P.
WHOOSH! (By the way, I meant to warn you: Failure to get my joke makes it 10 times more funny)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Case in point, I just realized that "Her teacher back in 70-something told her the the test was total bunk and to ignore it, because he intended to." should come before "Her most recent attempt at an IQ test landed her somewhere in the 130 range, I think." Because with the current wording, it makes him sound like he was calling her stupid, which he was not. Now perhaps I should bring up Hitler, to really stick my foot in my mouth.
"By your (bullshit unverified) claim that women are average and men are at the extremes, it doesn't matter."
Citation is in TFA.
My dad's an okay guy. He's pretty with it. But I wouldn't say he's smarter than my mom (especially not right in front of her, that's just ASKING for an ass-whupping with a spiked stun stick).
Same thing goes with my maternal grandmother and my recently deceased grandfather (except saying something to the effect above would just get me killed outright, family or no...short Irish women...they pack a lot of rage into those small frames...)
I don't really remember a lot about my paternal grandmother, but I'd assume, from my grandfather's demeanor, something similar existed there too).
Seriously. Most of the men in my family are/were amiable, phlegmatic guys. The women wore the pants though...
*GOD! That's a horrific mental image!*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Speaking as an intelligent-but-warmish female from the South, my theory on guys and intelligent females is a bit different. I think it actually has more to do with how nice the guy is and how secure he is in his own abilities. I'm a third year law student and I just got married in August, and my husband is a wonderful, brilliant techie with a masters in CS, and he definitely values the intelligence aspect of our interactions, but he's also a genuinely nice person who isn't insecure about his smarts. On the other hand though, my most successful relationship before this was with a guy who was just about the opposite of my husband (except he was also a very nice guy). He WAS the equivalent of dating a hot dumb blond chick. Really good looking, and a really sweet guy, but dumb as a brick. I figure he was accustomed to people being smarter than he was, so it didn't bug him much. He was proud of me. "This is my girlfriend, the smartest person I know!" - It was really sweet. But I needed more of an equal, so I ended the relationship and wound up with a skinny computer geek who rocks my world. If my past experience says anything helpful though, I think it's just a matter of finding a guy who doesn't feel threatened by empowered females. And I don't even mean empowered like "Rawr! I am woman!" - I just mean empowered as in the ones that always do well in academic pursuits and feel no pressure to dumb themselves down to make insecure people feel better about themselves.
It was hard to find guys who were attracted to me who didn't feel threatened by my activities. It's annoying, but a lot of people still think we're in a society where the male is supposed to be smarter, taller, stronger, faster, better, etc, than his female counterpart. I was smarter than my ex, and I'm taller than my husband. Big deal. Having a uterus doesn't dictate the traits of people I can connect with.
The other thing I was told once by a geek friend was that I was more the "marrying type." That guys want to have fun with the hot blonde party chick, but they want to eventually settle down with a smart female with a good personality who values them and that they can have a conversation with. I was flattered except insofar as I WASN'T, since that meant that somehow, there was this type of female around that was only for marrying and she would thus never actually be expected to "have fun." And having fun might actually invalidate her status as being the marrying type!! Ah well, a couple of instances of serial monogamy later, and I'm married to one of the "marrying type" of guys anyway. Haha, I say to the people that wanted to wait and settle down with us after they had their fun.
I really enjoy the pop-sci junkies that develop the theory before the evidence myself.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
I was aware your comment was in jest. I just tend to answer normally, if it doesn't pass a certain 'funny' threshold.
Reminds me of the old joke: Women are animal lovers, they want a Jaguar in the garage, a tiger in the bedroom, and a jack-ass to pay for it all.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Sex differences in toy preferences in children are marked, with boys expressing stronger and more rigid toy preferences than girls, whose preferences are more flexible. Socialization processes, parents, or peers encouraging play with gender-specific toys are thought to be the primary force shaping sex differences in toy preference. A contrast in view is that toy preferences reflect biologically-determined preferences for specific activities facilitated by specific toys. Sex differences in juvenile activities, such as rough-and-tumble play, peer preferences, and infant interest, share similarities in humans and monkeys. Thus if activity preferences shape toy preferences, male and female monkeys may show toy preferences similar to those seen in boys and girls. We compared the interactions of 34 rhesus monkeys, living within a 135 monkey troop, with human wheeled toys and plush toys. Male monkeys, like boys, showed consistent and strong preferences for wheeled toys, while female monkeys, like girls, showed greater variability in preferences. Thus, the magnitude of preference for wheeled over plush toys differed significantly between males and females. The similarities to human findings demonstrate that such preferences can develop without explicit gendered socialization. We offer the hypothesis that toy preferences reflect hormonally influenced behavioral and cognitive biases which are sculpted by social processes into the sex differences seen in monkeys and humans.
I don't know what world you live in, but the one I live in, regardless of whether or not they go to school or have a career, most (not all) women eventually want to raise children of their own. In an ideal world, women could raise children AND have a career. We live far away from an ideal world on a place called Earth, where months out of work are a serious setback, and where raising kids well AND dealing with workplace responsibilities is impossible unless you sleep 2 hours a day.
But culture effects evolution, doesn't it?
As for million year old gender roles, I don't see how you can take them seriously considering how much life has changed in so many other ways over the last few hundred years.
My ass. Look, I'll agree that our definition of intelligence is fundamentally flawed, and that there are multiple facets to intelligence (verbal, societal, logical...)
But if "intelligence...has no objective reality" then nobody could be stupid. And we all know stupid people.
Since it's apparent that there's a low end to the scale (even intuitive), there has to be a high one. We just haven't found how to measure it. I'd argue that the same rule - our intuition - is the best one we have at the moment. We all know smart people. But, alas, that's not quantitative.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
What makes you feel that breeding rates has anything to do with advancement? How many kids you have has little to do with our evolution and advancement. It might very well be that the more advanced we become, the fewer kids we have.. after all, this planet can only sustain so many people.......
MABASPLOOM!
Fundamentally the question cannot be answered as long as we cling to preconceived notions of what it means to be a man or a woman. "Man" is a social construct -- and from a scientific perspective there is no clear way to deliniate(sp?) between male and female. You can claim genetics determines that, and I'll show you XX men and XY women. You claim genitalia, I'll reply with birth defects. Any such distinction is arbitrary, and claims to the contrary are unscientific. The either/or proposition of gender and sex are social constructs. I'd also like to remind you that there are no studies proving that intelligence has any survival advantage whatsoever.
You can show me exceptions all day to what is usually defined as "males" and "females", but that's exactly what they are -- exceptions. If you have a room with one million classical "males", one million classical "females", and an XX male and an XY female, it doesn't mean that "male" and "female" have no meaning because the latter two exist. Biology is not Mathematics. One example of a falsehood doesn't collapse the whole idea.
But you do bring up an interesting point. Is IQ related to crassness? I rather suspect not. I work with some very bright engineers who probably wouldn't be able to speak if it wasn't for swear words.
Not the point I was making at all. Crass is probably unrelated. Stupid definitely is related to an act performed for amusement which could cause serious injury.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Actually, as a man I'd argue that that's true for any man.
I *know* that I'm better at some things than a typical woman. I *know* that men are inherently better at some things than women - at the risk of making a pun, they have the balls to take risks. I've seen a lot of men try math or science and succeed, and a lot of men try math and fail. Yet, I've rarely seen women "give it their all" in one of these fields, because women don't seem to try things that they aren't sure they can do.
Yet, I *know* that when men fuck up, they fuck up big. All of the stories about some guy lighting a match to see into his gas tank, or something similar, are about men. Less extremely, you have men who overextend their superior abilities and get killed. An EE (probably) won't be able to wire your house to code - but he may try and die. Women, again, don't try what they think they'll fail.
In short, men seem to be very good at some things, and forget that they're not that good at everything else - hence the abject stupidity. Women seem to be more constant - less super-bright spots, but a more even glow. Our society can't survive without both sides of the coin. If women had no power, men would destroy society. But if men had no power, we'd all get along but nothing would ever get done.
I know I come off as a douche. Sorry; there's no nice way to say it.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Reminds me of the cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, which describes how incompetetent individuals overestimate their competence (did anybody say middle manager?) while the truly competent underestimate their competence (aka. depressive realism). Maybe competent women are more vulnerable to depressive realism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism
(founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera)
I can't believe you were modded up so far.
It's a well-accepted and researched fact that there is more variance in male IQs than in females. The slightest shred of research (aka googleing iq variance) would have supported this.
Your whole other assertion is ridiculous. Do you actually think *MOST* women died by age 30?? I'd give you a citation but I can't even tell if you're serious. Again, googling historical life expectancy should help you.
Not to mention that by 1900 childbirth was relatively safe. Working in a factory (almost exclusively male) killed far more.
Advances in the "new era" don't disregard the fact that communication alone doesn't get anything done. Let alone that, for example, male scientists have no issue collaborating.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
You must be new here [cough 7 digit UID cough].
We mod things up because they stimulate our thought.
When someone is wrong, you reply, and if you had things worth saying you get modded up, too. Making snide remarks about "can't believe you were modded up so far" does not aid in a low-blood-pressure-friendly discussion, and is rather silly when you think about it. Just politely point out they're wrong, let the modding do the b-slapping.
Anyways, you seem to misunderstand what modding is about. It is not about "you are right" or "you are wrong", but rather "do you add to the discussion"?
GP definitely added to the discussion.
The entire philosophy of modern feminism isn't this parody of the 60's women's liberation movement, it's the shocking concept that women are people too, and they should be given the same opportunities to try and fail at anything a man can.
Aha!
That's the issue here. The problem is thatso much of it STILL DOES resemble that parody of hte 60s. I can't help but look at things like the college sports fiasco (I don't know what it's callled) - where they MUST field equal teams for men and women.
Frankly, colleges only put together sports teams to attract talent and gain noteriety and make money. No other real reasons... Women's sports (for the most part) don't help with that. Attendance is less than 20% or men's events, they generally lose money and except in rare cases, they do little to gain noteriety.
So, the govenment steps in and says that all colleges MUST have equal sports for men and women.
Note, most college programs have NO rule whatsoever that say women are forbidden from trying out for the college football team, or the college swimming team. If the government mandated that women MUST be allowed to play on any team they were capablel of playing on, I have no issue at alll. But.. instead, the government says, if you have a 18 member mens soccer team, you must have a 12 member women's soccer team as well with equal facilities.
In many small schools that were financially constrained, that basically decided that there would be no more soccer team at all, because there wasn't resources to double the outlay for a much less than double increase in attendance and recognition.
While I have no issue with women or women playing sports, my uncle frequently tells the story of his junior college baseball team. He was the star player and may have had a chance to play professionally, but when the new standard was enacted, the school did not have the resources to maintain a women's baseball team as welll and so the baseball program was cancelled entirely and his shot at his life's dream was dashed.
Silly story, I know, but it is THIS sort of parody of feminism that gives it a bad name.
I won't even go into the surveys where the majority of women say they should be paid the same at work with identical opportunities in every way, but that a man should ALWAYS buy dinner and hold the door for her and she would be offended if he expected the same in return. If you wish to crush social stigma and doctrine, it can't be "have your cake and eat it too" sort of pick and choose.
But, the men outnumber the women in that regard, perhaps 20... maybe 40 to one.
Sure, in the field of literature, it's more like 4-to-1....
how much weight should that be given before it appears to be "pandering"?
Sounds like someone's society deserves to fall.
+= E
If you plot the number of sexual partners, you'll find men have a curve that rises, peaks at around four (if I remember right), and then descends... a smaller number have had 8 partners, a still smaller 12, etc. It's a pretty normal distribution.
The chart for females is shaped differently. It has a larger peak at a lower number than men (say, three), descends rapidly... but then flattens. When you get up to HIGH numbers of sexual partners (15, 20, 30), there are more females at that level than males.
In other words, most women have fewer partners than men; but a small number of women have FAR more partners than most men.
Yours is the first post in the thread that shows that people are actually capable of an intelligent thought.
Congratulations.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Men rape women, not the other way around, because it succeeds in spreading their genes more widely, with nothing but a single night's work, while women have to actually birth the child and usually raise them.
I don't rape women, do you?
Whenever people want to give examples of important female mathematicians, my first thought is always Emmy Noether.
Has anyone noticed that the most "modern", "advance", "civilized", and "liberal" nations in the world have a decreasing fertility rate, while the barbarians continue to breed? Has anyone noticed the invasion of those "civilized" nations taking place all around us?
Don't be at all surprised if the Muslims and the Catholics inherit the world.
Just who do you think you're calling "barbarians"?
The fact that half of our society got pissed off and demanded equal rights makes it plainly obvious that they don't work.
The repressions of early-20th-century America and Europe were not exactly "traditional" gender roles. People ought to stop mistaking "traditional" for "fundamentalist" or "repressive". Tradition does not merely enforce, it evolves, and usually real repression or fundamentalism comes from rejection of working, evolved tradition as not closely adhering enough to an ideal.
In other words, most women have fewer partners than men; but a small number of women have FAR more partners than most men.
I wonder if that's related in any way to the sex trade?
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Can you point to any studies showing that morning coffee makes you a genius? ;-)
Not yet, but I might be able to once I've had my coffee.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
So we have a positive feedback loop here: one side gets benefits from being aggressive assholes and the other from being silly shoe obsessed bitches. - what is new?
Xenophobic? Because I dislike ILLEGAL ALIENS? Hardly. Look at Mexico. It isn't composed of just "Mexicans". There are Latinos, there are Azteca, there are Mexicans (mostly composed of "Mestizos" - a term that has gone out of fashion) and there are several of those "indigenous peoples" mentioned in the article - Mayans and others.
Mexico has been engaged in a quiet campaign of genocide against those "inigenous peoples" since AT LEAST the time of the revolution.
When those Azteca feel that it's time to move on, they will start on the United States as it's next target. Care to peruse their "Patron Saints"? Visit here. http://blogs.uww.edu/introtolatinamerica/2009/11/01/patron-saints-of-the-mexican-drug-underworld/ Look closely - NONE of these saints has anything to do with Catholicism - these are the icons of death worshippers and criminals. Azteca - the people who regularly raided what is now the SW United States for victims to sacrifice atop their pyramids.
I'm all for LEGAL IMMIGRATION - that is where people apply for immigration, follow the rules, and eventually become naturalized, and swear allegiance to their adopted country. ILLEGAL ALIENS are an invading force.
Xenophobic idiot. Whatever. Open your eyes, and look at what is going on. There is conflict in this world that you don't see, and are happy to remain blissfully unaware of.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I honestly havent figured out my view on the sexes completely, but I do agree somewhat with your basic premise. It would seem that in the US, the more we moved towards the idea that women should persue their own lives, make their own careers, etc, and that men do the same, the worse we get at having families and raising kids.
I don't care *who* stays home and takes care of the kids, the household, cooks, w/e, or how such tasks are divided, but *somebody's* got to do it.
But today's society seems to focus so much more on the individual, and on the *things* people have, so two-income families are extremely common, meanwhile the kids aren't getting personal attention, the house is a mess, everyone eats crappy food and gets fat, the divorce rate is higher, etc.
So, ya, I'd agree that traditional gender roles likely worked better in many ways. I'm hopeful that there is a compromise though.
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
All I can say is, Slashdot seriously needs some women posters, because this shit is shameful.
Property is theft.
enlightening.
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
Understanding in general demolishes stereotypes and laughs in the face of political correctness and auto censorship. I love science....
Cheers,
Evtim
... examined scores from seven million students who took statewide mathematics tests from grades two through 11 in 10 states between 2005 and 2007.
Which implies that they only sampled data from US students, which is frankly laughable when you want to make cross-culture statements about innate gender differences. American girls may very well be stupid because they were raised that way. A better study, in which data from all over the world was used is here:
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehumancondition/archive/2009/06/01/sharon-begley-the-math-gender-gap-explained.aspx
And their conclusion:
Mertz and Hyde looked for evidence of this imbalance—more boys than girls at the extremes of math ability—in international data, too. Again, they found that in some countries as many girls as boys score above the 99th percentile, and in others more girls than boys are extreme math dunces or math geniuses. In both cases, countries with as many or more girls at the upper extreme tend to be those with the greatest gender equality, such as Germany and the Netherlands. If the greater male variability in math performance that Summers cited as an explanation for the low numbers of women among math geniuses is not ubiquitous across the world, then “the occurrence of greater male variability and scarcity of top-scoring females in many, but not all countries .. . must be largely due to changeable sociocultural factors,”
Football Odds
I didn't say that emotional awareness isn't useful. It just isn't intelligence. For a starters it often goes against the rational method, which is accepted as a activity of the intelligence, and thus can't be equated with intelligence. For another, it can be, albeit crudely, measured but the correctness of an emotional decision can't be proven, so it can't be used as a measure of how right a choice was.
It also might be true that you need "both sides" of the brain for each to work at its best. But I know very emotionally "intelligent" people that are absolute morons, thus emotional intelligence isn't causal of rational intelligence and at best is supportive of the rational side.
As for your example of highly intelligent leaders that can't get anything done because they don't appeal to the emotional side of things with their employees: does that prove that the leader is poorly functioning, or just that the average person behaves only slightly better than a monkey in a tree (if you make me feel good I'll pick flees off your back)? It is quite possible that the lack of rational thinking leads the masses not to follow the brilliant leader, not the lack of emotional awareness causing the brilliant leader to be ineffective.
Why is it that, over the generations - including the more recent Women's Liberated generations - both women and men perceived males to have greater intelligence than females?
And puhlease don't give any of the pathetic anti-male "patriarchy" bullshit because I don't buy into it as a reason for why one gender should be perceived as being more intelligent than the other.
If possible stick to presenting actual empirical data from actual research.
To stay with the initial feline theme, substitute 'pussy' for 'jack-ass'.
For some reason that first statement just shouted for a googling. First link:
http://www.outsports.com/os/index.php/component/content/article/50-cowgirl-revolution?start=1
partial caption on included photo:
1920s champion Bonnie McCarroll
Apparently Women have been competing in rodeos and such for over a hundred years.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
"His analysis of some 30 studies showed..." ... and this is precisely where one can stop reading. A sample size of 30 is far to small to make ANY statement, it doesn't even prove a weak correlation or a trend!! Why do so many studies get attention which have so small sample sizes? I can't belive it!
> I'm all for LEGAL IMMIGRATION - that is where people apply for immigration,
> follow the rules, and eventually become naturalized, and swear allegiance to
> their adopted country. ILLEGAL ALIENS are an invading force.
You do realize, that this isn't possible in the US? You can't just come here
and say "Oh, I like it here and am gonna stay and become a citizen". You need
to get married, or invest lots of money or have a relative (1st degree) to
sponsor you. Other than that the door's pretty much shut.
And that's why there a millions of undocumented people in the country. Not
because they don't want to pay taxes or otherwise contribute...it's because
they can't do it any other way.
A birth rate of greater than 2 per couple is required to offset all the people who die before reproducing (infertility, early death, never get laid, etc). If all couples in a given pool produced only 2 children, then the size of that pool would dwindle (i.e. decline)
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
so what? The median number can easily be 0. If I'm in a town with 10 women and 9 men and I screw all the women and the 9 guys are priests or just don't get any, the average is 10, but that doesn't actually mean a thing.
If the 9 guys are priests I daresay the average number of sexual partners is closer to 17 or 18.
General Eligibility Requirements for U.S. Citizenship
To apply for U.S. citizenship, applicants must:
*
Be at least 18 years old at the time of filing the Application for Naturalization, Form N-400
*
Have been lawfully admitted to the United States
*
Have resided as a permanent resident in the United States for at least 5 years or 3 years if you meet all eligibility requirements to file as a spouse of a U.S. citizen
*
Have demonstrated continuous permanent residence
*
Have demonstrated physical presence
*
Have lived for 3 months in the USCIS district or state where the Application for Naturalization, Form N-400 is filed
*
Demonstrate good moral character
*
Show an attachment to the U.S. Constitution
*
Be able to read, write, speak, and understand basic English
*
Demonstrate a knowledge of U.S. civics (history and government)
*
Take the oath of allegiance to the United States
Please see the links on the right of this page to learn if you are eligible and how to apply for U.S. citizenship.
http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=ce2b2cd1f7e9e010VgnVCM1000000ecd190aRCRD&vgnextchannel=96719c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD
I beg to differ with you. We most definitely have a huge criminal element who comes here, with NO DESIRE to become citizens. Drug mules, money launderers, etc etc ad nauseum. Oh yeah, the human trafficers.
But, aside from the worst of criminals - most of our 20 million ILLEGAL ALIENS became criminals by reason of having come here ILLEGALLY. The United States is, after all, a sovereign nation, which has the right and obligation to limit immigration. Millions are breaking the law by being here. Hence, criminals. We don't need no more criminals - we have more than enough.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
But of course if she had more than that number of children, she contributed to the balooning world population exacerbating environmental problems and overcrowding to be faced by future generations.
While an expanding population is good in the short term, we do need population to stabilise in the long term. And in fact the sooner we have a stable population the better things will be for the future.
What is the point of saying that men and women have equal IQs? IQ tests were designed so the average IQ is 100 across genders.
(Emphasis mine.)
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
If you're not going to back that up with some kind of research, you might as well be saying that there *is* a God because you believe it to be so.
consider
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Knowing my mother, I suspect she would be really freaked-out if she gave birth to 0.1 or 0.3 of a child ...
Interestingly enough, in my family the wives are often the more intelligent ones. This is more so in the previous generation (i.e. amongst my aunts and uncles).
Given my cultural background (Portuguese) and the fact that most of my family comes from the countryside and has a low average level of education, it's interesting enough to see that while the men are "the man in the house" and supposedly make the decisions, the women do a lot of "convincing" on them and in some couples are the actual main decision makers.
Certainly in the social and cultural environment for the previous generation, it's often in the woman's best interest to not be seen by the men as "visibly" intelligent.
In my own generation, where pretty much all of us are city-folk with a degree, things seem more balanced. Certainly my female cousins expect (and often get) an environment where they are co-decision-makers.
We give our boys legos, blocks, erector/mechano, tinker toys, electronics kits, microscopes, telescopes, child size carpenters tools.
We give our girls Barbies, Littlest Pet Shop, Disney Princesses, CD Players, Bratz, hair brushes, make up, etc...
Girls have a higher "social intelligence" in most cases as spend their youth pretending to be mommies or party girls. So they learn their social skills early and attempt to mature to womanhood early.
Almost all boy toys are puzzles of some type or another. The "intelligent ones" spend their entire youths puzzling things out or attempting to figure out how to do things.
There are exceptions to both, I see it all the time at my kids' school. But on average, when you get to the school, of the children doing productive things (as opposed to kicking a ball around). Girls are coloring or making bead pictures. Boys are building and playing with mechanical or otherwise educational toys.
We categorize our children from birth and raise them differently. Women don't lack the intelligence that men do, men simply excel at the types of tasks found on IQ tests since they spend their entire childhood indirectly training for them.
It's often why in a typical middle class relationship (excluding couples with lawyers, marketing drones, pointed haired bosses etc...) that men are expected to devise solutions to complex problems. It's also why children tend to think "pappa's smarter than momma". It isn't that the women can't do it, in fact, single mothers have to solve all the same problems as the pappa does in a family. It's the fact that pappa's get more satisfaction from solving problems of those types and if women couldn't get us to do that stuff, they would probably have to do all the work in the house.
As for people talking about George W. Bush's IQ, it was Sr. that was reported to have 120, the reports I've read on Jr. had him closer to 100. Either way, on the IQ scale, they're both pretty much next to vegetables.
You haven't posted anything refuting my claim despite your list. There is currently no way for actual legal immigration, as in "The US is cool...let's move there and build a life". You do need to have my aforementioned prereqs to even entertain the thought. Sure you can come as tourist or even as student or worker and stay a while, if all goes well. But that's a long shot from becoming a citizen. You should search for how to get a green card instead.
As for criminals...well, surely among immigrant there are certain criminal elements among them (I mean real criminals, not people who have overstayed their visa a couple days). But you might find a visit to an underground 'temp agency' geared towards illegal aliens eye-opening, when the highest-paid job is around $2.50. Fact is, if the people currently in the country undocumented were given the opportunity to become lawful workers, you'd see a lot more tax income and a lot less crime.
If I was a woman, I would feel offended right now.
I don't -need- to back up my claims with anything!
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I think we're all just in too much shock to say anything...
You assume gender roles are the same in every culture and society. They aren't. Go do some research on ancient cultures including Sparta and the Celts. Men and women fought side by side on the battlefield. And breeding doesn't denote intelligence. It typically means lack of birth control either due to ignorance, poverty, or religion. Oh, and lastly: given how in Muslim countries a woman can be stoned to death for being raped, I can't exactly say that their culture "works".
Do not disturb. Already disturbed. http://www.teaaddictedgeek.com
So then you say, a "society which due to purely internal factors" has the capacity to produce, say, one crazy person who manages to press the nuke button, or one crazy person who finds his own race superior and thus finds it appropriate to invade half a continent with military force, and plan to invade the rest of the world the same way too, or, as in this case, a bitter bitch coming up with an ideology that makes half the population think they are being treated "unfair" if they are not allowed to go against nature the way it evolved for millions of years, would have proven to be a "non-functional society" to begin with, therefore deserving this, and nothing could consequently possibly ever be done to stop it since it was inherently "non-functional"? Yeah, that sounds like female logic alright... Well then, if one of more people WOULD actually manage to put an end to the above mentioned person with the nuke button, the crazy man with military world domination plans, or the stupid bitter bitch who felt like ending the human race at that particular time of the month when she threw together that nice little ideology of hers (and the damage it has done so far), wouldn't that be a "change due to purely internal factors" in this society too, which would in turn prove that the society in question was functional after all, and rather just had a temporary lapse of sanity due to people with broken logic managing to fool enough people to believe that it was sound?
Look, the central fact is obvious: In nature's assigned gender attributes, Mens' core function is to impress women; Womens' core function is to judge men. Males fight and perform to their best capability and subsequently, the watching females choose the best man. The best man is always the most attractive to females. Men/males compete and women/females choose. Thats the method by which evolution has manipulated animals and humans alike and it manifests itself in our society as high performing bread-winning men and the women that choose them.
http://www.anticharisma.com/
When it comes to number of sexual partners the bell curve for men is a lot flatter than for women.
This means the average women has less partners than the average man - a small percentage of really slutty women are taking up the slack for the rest of them.
No sig today...
Spacial skills are not very relevant for the vast majority of modern scientists, engineers, developers, etc. Spacial skills are only useful for giving very young male children more enjoyment of building toys, and for navigation. Women otoh have a distinct and dramatic advantage in most memory tests, not just family members, but also chemical reactions, metallurgical properties, equations, etc. So we expect that societies that best helps women into science and engineering disciplines will develop technology far far faster.
There are basically two major cultural defects preventing women from capturing these disciplines :
(1) Mixed gender schooling -- Girls outperform boys in mixed gender schooling, but girls preform even better when competing against only other girls. So we must institute single gender schooling.
(2) Child bearing -- Women are forced to choose between raising children and high profile careers. So we must institute "free day care" for women in science and technology.
Ideally, we could have just vastly more funding of science and technology that allowed women to get jobs in any city they wanted, and thus allow grandparents to raise children. In fact, grandparents historically had an enormous role in raising children, and still do among poor people.
I'd say the easiest route would be to write up a clean simple explanation of all the ways children benefit from exposure to grandparents, and make people read it before receiving full social security benefits. You'd never be forced to work with kids, just read the explanation, but your social security benefits might be reduced if you refused to even read it.
I think the only other options besides grandparents is literally government run 24-7 day care, which might work out very well, but doesn't have the historical precedent.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Don't be an idiot. Just because their skin is a different colour, doesn't make them any less capable of making a positive contribution to society. A culture that accepts and integrates people with enough enthusiasm to set out to make their fortune, does well as a result.
Jobs and wealth isn't a finite quantity - more people means a faster moving economy, which means everyone ends up better off - at least, on average. I do see people upset about immigrants, but that's almost invariably because said immigrants are doing the same job, but better and more efficiently than they could.
Hardly seems fair that someone who's better at a job should get it in preference really...
I'm unsure about the particular study cited in the WSJ, but males have higher variance in most traits in most species, so we expect this for most facets of human intelligence too. So yes.
*But* you actually don't see big difference until you start talking about quite exceptional people. In fact, you expect to see far more women in the IQ ranges deemed "high enough for engineering". Additionally, women have better memory overall while the male spacial advantages are mostly irrelevant for science and engineering.
I think these memory advantages vastly outweigh the high variance effect because women have quickly dominated any area of science where they had significant access or role models, like commutative algebra in mathematics, biology, etc. Of course, a few outlier males still take the very topmost roles in even these fields, but females make up the brunt of the intellectual workforce.
I think the two big social corrections that'll help get more women into science and technology are (a) switching to single sex schools and (b) offering women a route to simultaneously raise children while having a career in science or engineering.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1468776&cid=30351642
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Ah, that's a good point. But it also applies to my other example (so there's nothing special about the get-a-chick case), and pretty much any example you can come up with, unless money and power are goals unto themselves.
If power is your goal, you're likely to be sociopathic, or at least not be a kind of person people like hanging around. If money is your goal, you're likely a greedy bastard; again, this won't make you popular.
Having any of these as a goal unto itself and not a means seems to suggest some unhealthy obsession.
IQ tests might not be perfect, but a scale that rates morons at the bottom, sheeple in the middle and Steven Hawking at the high end isn't "fundamentally flawed". So called "emotional intelligence" aside.. You can argue until your face turns blue, but someone with a low IQ will be noticeably dumb while someone with a high IQ will most likely be noticeably smart, at least in the context of understanding how logical things work, spatial awareness, ability to learn and comprehend, and apply said learned information to novel problems.
Until you can prove that IQ tests show no (or a very weak) correlation between IQ score and the properties mentioned above (i.e. the things they are made to quantify) you have no argument and by virtue of logic have no place pushing your rubbish misconceptions on others. (sorry if that sounded a bit harsh)
It depends...
Teenage example. Daughter is boy crazy and doing incredibly retarded things like loaning things to friends that are not reliable and with destroy or lose her stuff, she is getting D's and E's in school.
Son is Straight A, on the track team and makes very smart decisions on friends. he does not universally trust everyone like his sister.
The boy is smarter. Not IQ smarter, because she can if she actually tries, kick his ass in mathematics.
But I'm giving the boy the smarter tag simply because he IS living smarter instead of living like an idiot.
I dont care if you have a 175IQ. if you live like a moron, you ARE a moron.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Intelligence itself might be overrated. Intelligence alone isn't enough to be successful at something. Effort seems to be the overriding factor. Determined people can outstrip smart people who are lazy *raises hand*.
There was a study where they assessed the abilities of two classes of kids. They complimented one class on how smart they were and the other on how hard they worked. Before long, the smart kids were frustrated. The hard working kids where less likely to give up. They found out that they could work through things they didn't understand.
The whole thing was too near the bone for me. Through my childhood they told me i was gifted (but undisciplined). i had a tendency to assume that anything i found difficult was beyond me, and i'd quit.
Intelligence alone won't help in relationships. Smart people sometimes think they can outsmart relationship problems, or that love is a problem to be solved. It just doesn't work that way. Until i gained some serious self awareness through painful experiences, i had a tendency to annoy the shit out of people by trying to be smart/logical.
Last i heard, the membership of MENSA showed that they are not universally wealthy or highly placed in their careers.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I haven't read more than a few nutty people who think there are no gender differences, both people who think it's all biologically predetrmined and those who think everything is cultural. Most scientists I read fall somewhere in between.
Here's an interesting discussion between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke about gender differences, intelligence and how it relates to women in science:
THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE
Obviously there's a lot of prejudice and sexism clouding the issues, which makes it very hard to say for sure that the differences between adults are biologically programmed. When we've peeled away all the prejudice, what remains should be biological. Even so, biological differences are nothing more than slightly offset normal distributions, meaning that a fair number of women outpeform most men, and vice versa. Conservative gender roles that restrict these people are unnecessary and oppressive, especially when argued from tradition or religion.
If you think gender roles work for you, fine. But they opress a lot of people, and you parttake indirectly in that oppression by defining what's normal and what's not like this. Be a manly man if you want (doubtful since we're on Slashdot, but still), but why judge others like this when it feeds prejudice and sexism?
Fertility rates fall everywhere where women are empowered, so it's not just us. If lower fertility is the price we pay for equality, it's a small price. But there are good reasons to think that more equality can make starting a family a more promising deal, especially for women.
Even if we accept that men are more extreme and women are more consistent, you can't say that it's biologically programmed. Studies have shown that people treat boys and girls differently from the very beginning. I don't know if you meant that it was biologoical, but I wanted to point that out.
Also, as for women "giving it their all", there have been studies on women in science that show they perform worse when told they're expected to because of their gender. When not told what to expect, they perform just as well as men. Add to that an academic world still dominated by men and with quite a lot of remaining prejudice and sexism, and I wouldn't either be motivated to give it my all.
What do you say we get rid of all the prejudice and sexism and other social negative pressures, and then we can agree that whatever differences are left are biological?
...so I don't trust it. Anyone have a link to one written by a man?
With more equality, raising children and taking care of the home wouldn't be burdens just for women to bear.
There's also something to be said for daycare and similar social services, and their effect on fertility and how parents combine work and family. But then I'm from one of those countries Fox News thinks is socialist.
I don't know about the US, but the idea that Europe is being taken over by quickly breeding muslims is a myth, most likely spread by fear-mongering racists.
I've learned from my friends with other sexuals orientations that heterosexuality is very loud and very obnoxious. You just don't see it, because it's everywhere and it's normal. Going against this established norm automatically becomes obnoxious in some people's eyes, because it upsets the status quo and their narrow definitions of what's normal and acceptable.
I suspect you're one of those people. Getting upset because a ficitonal character is portrayed as gay is pretty sad. Even worse, thinking that it's a sign of homosexual propaganda to kids is bordering on homophobic. Showing kids homosexuality is normal isn't mean just to let the homosexuals among them feel as normal as you and I do, but it's also for the heterosexuals and their views of homosexuals. They need to be taught that different sexual orientation is no different from race or ethnicity. You don't disciriminate and you don't hate because of it. It's not propaganda, it's basic education in being an enlightened human being and not a fearful, narrowminded bigot.
Many dumb people happen to be way happier than very smart people. Ignorance is bliss.
;).
;).
;).
The thing is if you are one of those super geniuses then most people would be way dumber than you. So if you want a happy life, you should use your smarts to figure out how to enjoy being with stupid people - since there are lots more of them around
And why should it be hard? Lots of people can get along just fine with dumb dogs, so what's the problem with smart people getting along with good-natured dumb humans? Just look at the dumb happy face of a dog after you say "Good dog!" to him just for fetching a ball. There are millions of animals who are stupid and yet lead reasonably happy lives with humans.
Sure I couldn't talk meaningfully with a dog or the average person about cognitive dissonance etc, but I can talk about other stuff. And some dogs just sit and listen no matter what you say anyway
I just try to talk different stuff with different people. Different people will have different interests (politics, medicine, technology, IT stuff, religion, whisky, food, playing tag).
BTW if that sexy blonde is extremely dumb compared to you, is it some form of bestiality if you have sex with her? After all scientists like to say that humans share >98% genes with chimps, and if you two shared too many genes it'll be incest
People say beauty fades etc. That's true, but the mind fades too (usually lasts longer tho). As for "character", sure seems like lots of people get crankier and more bad natured as they get older. Many can't even realize simple stuff like: they're feeling short tempered because they're hungry, and so take measures to counteract that. You'd think they'd have learnt that after being around for many decades. But no...
To me if the girl is nice and kind to someone she doesn't have to be kind to at all, she's likely to be a genuinely kind person at heart (it'll take a severe degenerative brain disease to make her unkind - while not impossible, is not as likely). So even in the times when the embers of love grow dim, she'd still be kind to me - which will make it easier to keep things going till we manage to get the flames back up.
And hopefully I will be kind to her, there's the big problem- I'm not really such a nice guy. Oh well...
Agreed, and in part I think the increase in cost of raising a a child is related to the number of two (or more) income homes.
In our society we have to pay for stuff, and the price charged for stuff is related to the amount of money we have. Because two income homes (a consequence of increased gender equality in the workplace) have increased, those with two incomes are advantaged in the marketplace for housing, goods etc against those with only a single income. In other words, prices of goods are normalised to the spending power of two-income households. This means that single people, or couples with children of whom one chooses to stay and raise them cannot compete for the good quality resources, unless they are exceptionally fortunate.
The upshot of this is that the unintended consequence of enabling equality in the workplace was to compel women (primarily) into work instead of raising children.
The battle of the sexes has been fought and won, but the losers were not men, but children.
My solution would be to heavily tax second (and subsequent) incomes to a home, and use the money to enable couples to have one partner to stay at home a raise their children (or perhaps care for elderly relatives, the sick etc) if they so chose.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
The US has one of the most liberal immigration policies in the world. It's easier to come here than almost anywhere else.
This all comes out from the view that "Gender is a social construct", which is implying (without actually stating, and could thus be construed as weasel words) that social constructs can be changed as we see fit. This dangerous, as the law of unintended consequences comes into play with anything remotely complex. It also ignores the fact that "Equality" is just as much a social construct as gender roles.
Anyway, the unintended consequence of the success of the feminist movement has been the neglect inflicted upon the children of our generation, and the devaluation of motherhood.
The battle of the sexes has been fought and won, but the losers were not men, but children.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Childbirth killed most women before they reach 30 [...] the issue of childbirth is the only reason for the old roles. We've solved that problem, and it's time to redefine the roles.
Who mods stuff like this up? It's obviously wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_mortality "The historical level of maternal deaths is probably around 1 in 100 births.[11]"
I wouldn't count on it ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Well, we can safely conclude the guy isn't you ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I wonder if men really like "dumb", or if they just don't like the competition/arguments. A smart partner may be more likely to argue with you over who is right. Heck, a smarter partner is more likely to *BE* right, which means that you will be *WRONG* more often. Most people don't being wrong - or at least have it pointed out when they are - and that applies especially to a lot of guys I know.
I prefer smarter women myself. Heck, I also prefer older women, mostly because the ones I found in my generation were either
a) Already married/attached/etc
b) Already done (a), and are now bitter
c) Gold-diggers
d) Rather unintelligent, or at least pretend to to
e) Out-of-area or unavailable
f) Had standards I couldn't meet
And yes, with (f) I'm perfectly willing to agree that my inability to find a "perfect partner" was at times because I wasn't good enough for them at the time, but when I was in my early 20's I definitely running into a lot of (c) and (d). And looking back at myself in days past, I can see why (social skills, not at the drooling-in-my-lap variety but definitely needed work). Unattractive in both men/women, and a lot of that tends to fall into the "lack of maintenance" area. A lot of supposedly hot women spend a lot of time in the maintenance area which doesn't leave a lot else in their lives. It tended to be a feedback-loop issue though. A lot of so-called nerds back then actually became a fair bit more attractive *after* dating for the first few times and learning the ropes.
So now I'm dating somebody who's older than me, and smart. She's smart (degree in Accounting, Masters in Business) and done the married to a jerk/cheater before so she seems to appreciate the things I do more than girls I had previously dated.
If I had to compare my parents, I'd have to say my father was smarter, but that a lot of it had to do with my mother simply choosing not to take the responsibility of making a decision one way or another, and/or choosing to act dumb. On the other hand my mother is probably a lot better at acting on people/emotions than my father, who is better at acting on information, etc.
I regards to "warmish" VS "hot" Women not only often undervalue their intelligence, but also their looks. I think that smart people often tend to second-guess themselves though, and assumedly they're less likely to become a ONS, which is what a lot of others who will overlook you are gunning for. Don't underestimate the hotness of a good lookin' gal with a brain.
Men don't get any say in how a pregnancy turns out, but are still required to pay up in full, even in cases where the woman intentionally got herself pregnant.
Actually, in that case they guy had his say when he unzipped his pants and didn't wrap. Unless the woman was poking pinholes in the condoms etc then the consequences are not unforseeable. For guys the consequences of such are no worse than a woman who ends up with a father-of-the-child who turns out to be a complete dickhead.
That a man who "fights back" is more likely to end up as the one in the back of squad car.
I know some pretty big guys who have had their asses kicked by women. Why? Because if they defended themselves with even the slightest bit too much force, they'd be tossed in jail. Heck, there are cases where you have some guy bloodied, bruised, and the woman with maybe a mark on her shoulder (such as from - for example - holding her off), and still it's the guy who gets arrested. Heck, even in cases where the female assailant had a bloody frying pan or carving knife, the guy calls the cops, and when they officers show up they just about cart him off before the operator tells them he's the one that called it in.
"but most cognitive differences I firmly believe are largely the result of cultural conditioning rather than physical differences in the brain."
Ahem. You are aware of the old left-brain - right-brain thing? In males and females, the two halves do pretty much the same thing, but the opposite sides are more developed in the sexes? Much of that difference seems to be the result of hormonal balances before, during, and shortly after birth. A lot of androgynous and hermaphrodite conditions are being blamed on those hormones, recently.
Real science trumps belief, even when those beliefs are politically correct. ;^)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Evolutionary pressure pushes both genders to sleep around. And your take of women as the nest builders is 1950s gender role at is best, but not a biological truth.
Are you stupid or trolling. He said nothing about the median. Even in your mythical town, to line up with the numbers, it would have to look like this:
You're in a town with 10 women and 9 men, all the men are priests. You claim to have fucked 10 different women, so on average the men fucked 1 woman each. The women, on average, claim to have fucked .5 men. So half of the women are lying. Or at least one women is lying. Or you're lying. In any case, on average we must assume that the numbers are equal, because someone is clearly lying.
You're aware rape isn't about sex right? And men do get raped (by women, not just by other men.)
Evolutionary pressure affects women the same way it affects men. It's your social upbringing in a "male dominated" society that makes you believe there is actually a difference. If you go out and actually talk to women, you'll find they have the same desires (sexually speaking) men do in almost all cases. The belief that there is some biological need for males to spread their seed while women don't have this urge is complete and utter nonsense.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Civilizations rise and fall based upon shoes.
Last post!
There's also something to be said for daycare and similar social services, and their effect on fertility and how parents combine work and family. But then I'm from one of those countries Fox News thinks is socialist.
I guess that depends on whether you think you can pay someone to love, encourage, and teach your child as well as you can. Personally, I believe the first 7 years of a child are absolutely critical to the development of how they view themselves and the world. Those views will influence everything that they do. If you want your child to reach the conclusion early on that they are just a "cog in the machine" and making money is more important than being with them then you will have achieved your goal.
Just don't be surprised when you retire and find that your children don't really value spending time with you over doing what they want. There won't be any malice or anger. Just an innate understanding of how much we should sacrifice for family.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
"This shit" is also part of the reason you will not tend to see more female posters. There are enough people who make comments like this, or comments that seem to reflect women's worths only in terms of how hot or fuckable or sexually willing they are, or that portray our abilities as likely to be exceptional only in trivial areas like remembering actors' names (not, I note, names in general), or our interests as limited to shoes and shopping, to make Slashdot unwelcoming. Are they majority sentiments? Perhaps not, but they're certainly the noticeable ones.
Steven Hawking doesn't even know his IQ and neither do you so he's not evidence of anything.
I don't know what "sheeple" means but "moron" is either a person who doesn't conform to certain "normal" cultural expectations or an individual with a damaged brain due to a birth defect or accident.
You seem to have a strange idea of how science works. The principle is that the burden of proof lies with the person with the theory. The lack of evidence that an IQ test doesn't measure intelligence is not evidence that it does.
In any case, as I've said before, intelligence is a made up concept, not like mass, volume, charge, etc that have an objective meaning.
Don't know why you would need 24/7 daycare. 8-6 daycare at $7/day heavily subsidized seems to work here in Quebec. It is a hit to the budget, but, like medicare, it is one that benefits a lot of people. I'm happy to pay taxes (and the taxes just are not that high; compensate for the services you get and the only people who don't come out ahead are the people rich enough to want special services and they can afford the tax hit) to pay for it.
Not sure where all the negativity toward gender equality is coming from. My wife always did better than I did at school and now that she has given up on the pure research thing she is outcompeting the men she works with in business.
I agree the ideal is having one parent at home (6 month rotation anyone?), but the one working parent has to do really well to make it work out. It is not like having two incomes caused any increase in standard of living. Housing prices went up by an income and now most families need two incomes to live as their parents lived with one.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
"But if "intelligence...has no objective reality" then nobody could be stupid. And we all know stupid people."
Given the number of high IQ people who do "stupid" things, we may want to rethink our measures. Nevertheless, "stupid" is usually meaningful only in the context of a culture expectation or value.
Both genders, at least in bars, tend to prefer good-looking, dumb, and happy. Most guys and girls I know who pick up a lot have a fake personality they use when they talk to another attractive person they want to pick up. Lots of dumb but happy looks...
I think part of it comes down to most people wanting to believe they are smarter than the people they date (and women are willing to let men believe that they are smarter). I don't get it myself: why date someone who is not fun to talk to?
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
No. In fact men and women have the same number of sexual partners with even about the same bell curve. It depends on the type of questions you ask, and in which sequence. If you ask for instance the sex upfront, self declared women put much lower numbers than men. If you ask for the sex after the questionaire, the numbers women give is higher. And if you don't ask for the sex at all (and state so explicitely), the numbers given for both sexes match those men give on average.
Strange result, huh?
Wrong. Idealistic women think that smart people should never have need of weapons. Smart people become weapons.
So a monotonous woman with 2 children isn't necessarily contributing to the decline of anything.
Best. Typo. Evar.
The first years are undoubtedly important for a child. I just don't buy that being away from the parents for part of the day is harmful after a certain young age (lower than seven). In fact, it seems to be a good thing, at least from the studies I've seen here. There's certainly no evidence from harm from the system of widespread free daycare we get here, afaik.
More importantly, if we accept your argument that being away from parents estranges the child from them, it should be a strong argument for equality. After all, if you spend all your time with mom and little with dad, as per the gender roles people think are so important, you'd be estranged from your father. This is especially true if he adopts a classical gender role and stays away from touchy feely bonding.
Wow...that low is the average? Hell, I didn't do nearly as well as my friends, but, I lost count easily over the 35-40+ different chicks I slept with mark. Is this maybe how many they can still name by name...or in total period?
I know a few guys in triple digits, but, I've not known hardly anyone that isn't in at least double digits on number of women slept with, and I'm a bit old. I understood that todays kids sleep with each other much more easily that my generation did...I'd expect that # of different partners average to be MUCH higher for today's kids.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Are you sure about this [wikipedia.org]?"
Sure, I mean you can't rape the willing now, can you?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
So between 20 and 30 % of all "illegal immigrants" are "truly undesirables"? Based on what education do you make this guess? Seriously, that's a ridiculous statement to make without some support.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
I don't see what all the brew-haha is here. Women already have it made. They have half the money, and ALL of the pussy......
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I understood that todays kids sleep with each other much more easily that my generation did...I'd expect that # of different partners average to be MUCH higher for today's kids.
I think that's a myth. I don't think teens now are as promiscuous as teens in, say, late 60s/early 70s. That was a bit of a fluke. A lot of guys still follow the traditional pattern: Sex with a few different girls, get married... and then maybe that's it, maybe there'll be one or two others, a divorce. There's various cultural niches that have massively more or less, but those are niches.
You're brave. Be proud!
Free Martian Whores!
As a man with an IQ of 300, it's good to know that a woman with an IQ of 160 is my peer.
Now if I could just figure out how this dishwasher works ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I am surprised that many of my postings on slashdot or not scored 5 by others( which I was expecting ). Sigh... This study about male ego explains it I guess.
When a thief sees a saint, all he sees are his pockets!
The first years are undoubtedly important for a child. I just don't buy that being away from the parents for part of the day is harmful after a certain young age (lower than seven). In fact, it seems to be a good thing, at least from the studies I've seen here. There's certainly no evidence from harm from the system of widespread free daycare we get here, afaik.
Define harm. On the surface all a human requires is food, shelter and clothing to continue to function, except that is not really the case. We also have other social and spiritual needs that, if they aren't met, will cause us great pain. Because of that pain they will eventually cause others pain. I don't know if you are familiar with the saying: "Hurt people hurt people." but it is definitely true. A child that is suffering because of unmet social or spiritual needs doesn't understand where the pain is coming from so they can't ask for it like they can ask for more food or clothes. It just builds until it can't be stuffed/controlled anymore.
Going to daycare can meet some of the social needs of a child but without you there they may not learn the kinds of things that you want them to learn. I'm not just talking about bad words or situations that are beyond their maturity to handle. I'm talking about what characteristics are favored because it's a group setting. If your child is inherently shy, compliant and can play quietly for long periods of time then they will probably be ignored while the adults spend most of their time trying to keep the unruly, rambunctious kids from causing chaos. Kids can be very mean to each other for various reasons and in a group setting kids may be forced to adapt in unhealthy ways to cope because there are too many interactions for the adult(s) to weigh in on all of them.
What I've discovered is a good warning sign that we are not spending enough time with out kids is that we don't enjoy our time with them. I'm not saying that every minute is pure joy but if, on the whole, we don't WANT to spend more time with our own children then there is something wrong.
More importantly, if we accept your argument that being away from parents estranges the child from them, it should be a strong argument for equality. After all, if you spend all your time with mom and little with dad, as per the gender roles people think are so important, you'd be estranged from your father. This is especially true if he adopts a classical gender role and stays away from touchy feely bonding.
The argument I'm trying to make is at least twofold. One, if your child spends much more interactive time with someone other than you than they will turn out different than you in very fundamental, world-view type ways, which can lead to estrangement. Two, if your child is not getting their social and spiritual needs met then they will be estranged from everyone, including you. It's just a matter of degree. I think my family is fairly healthy but I'm still not happy with the amount of time I get to spend with my kids. I've never heard of anyone regretting how much time they spent with their family.
I should point out that as a Christian I believe that only through surrendering our lives to Jesus can our spiritual needs be met, but I recognize that not everyone believes that. If you have found another way to fill that void in your child then I'm happy for you.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
You define harm, and see if you can find it more widespread here (Sweden) than in any place that doesn't provide daycare. I don't think you can. In fact, many indicators show the opposite from what I've seen.
Daycare personel should pick up on kids that are lonely, but of course they don't always have the time. That could just as well be an argument for better funding though.
You don't have to be hovering over your kid 24/7 to help them process what they pick up from the world. As long as you can talk and they trust you, they'll come to you at the end of the day. They will pick up things whether they go to daycare or not, unless you isolate them. I'm going to guess social isolation and overbearing parents is much more harmful than learning bad words or getting teased by other kids at daycare.
But if men had no power, we'd all get along but nothing would ever get done.
Strange, then, how many men have power in New Labour and the United States Congress.
And, guess what, some people see homosexual relations as evil. When they dominate the society (God forbid), propaganda of gay normalcy really is homosexual propaganda to try to normalize deviancy.
Welcome to moral relativism. Don't stay.
I once spent some 20 minutes to explain that 1) yes you can copy when using a scanner and YES 2) you do require a printer as well. Glad to know that the guy was just culturally challenged.
You misunderstood my argument on several points.
I didn't say that most women failed to reproduce. I said most women died before 30. I overstated a bit, but the point remains the same. Wikipedia puts the historical count at 1 in 100 births, which works out to about 10%, assuming the average woman had 10 pregnancies. In many cases it was likely as high as 30% of women dying in childbirth.
On the case of oppression, I said nothing about oppression. This is a division of labor issue. On the male side, as I said, there are a lot of high-risk jobs. But if you educate a man, you don't want to risk him in such an occupation, and it's fairly easy to keep him safe, and he can still procreate.
On the womens' side, you've got around a 10-30% chance that the woman will die shortly after finishing her education if you want her to procreate and serve in some serious administrative capacity. So it makes sense to train men in these roles, and keep them out of harm's way. Prior to the 20th century, however, you could not so easily mitigate the survivability challenges of women.
What kind of genius drinks coffee just before going to bed?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The kind that isn't a complete pussy.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You're citing Wikipedia. And guess what Wikipedia cites? Wikipedia.
But I did overstate by saying most. From my college history (which I majored in for a year or so) I seem to recall the actual figure at something like 30%, which actually isn't that far from 1 in 100 births. (If the average woman has 10 pregnancies, that's 10% of women dying in childbirth.)
But the argument remains valid. Counting pregnancy as a natural cause, a woman is easily double, probably triple or more times as likely to die of natural causes before the age of 30 than a man is. A man, if he dies of a sickness, it's likely to be related to his work. Consequently, we worked out a division of labor that keeps educated men and all women out of danger and relies on uneducated men to do dangerous tasks.
Are you stupid or trolling. He said nothing about the median.
He's just being a slashdot pedant. Median, mean and mode are technically all types of average (and there's probably more - I have never done a specific stats course), but when people casually say average they pretty much always mean the mean.
Car analogies break down.
Immigration is a red herring. The only concern with illegal immigration is that you lose *any* regulation as to whether you're letting in a criminal vs. someone who wants to be a productive member of society. Aside from that, it doesn't really matter whether people immigrate legally or otherwise -- they're here all the same, "barbaric" culture and all.
Beyond that, geographical location is becoming less and less of an issue, not more of one. Jobs are being replaced by workers overseas who can perform the same task nearly as well (low level customer service) or better (many engineering and manufacturing jobs), and almost always cheaper than their domestic counterparts. Globalization is inevitable, and trying to fight it by campaigning against illegal immigration, railing against NAFTA, or fear mongering with your absurd allegations of the future of our descendants is as futile as the RIAA clutching desperately at the sand of the music industry falling through their fingers. (Or, if you *really* can't see where things as going, replace the RIAA with the horse and buggy industry). Worse, it's counterproductive, because it shifts our focus from remaining competitive through invention and innovation (good things) and tries to accomplish it through isolationism and defending deprecated models of reality (bad things). At best, isolationism allows us to suppress globalization for a few generations until the world rises up against us (militarily, economically, or otherwise) and decides they've had enough of being subjugated (and degraded, as the case may be).
If we're economically successful, people will *want* to be like us. They'll be coming here to be *part* of our culture (as they do today), not to replace it. If we're unsuccessful, then we probably aren't as important and omnipotent as we make ourselves out to be.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Skin color? Is that what you see when you look at a Mexican, or a Salvadoran, or whatever? You're the bigot, if that's true.
Skin color has nothing to do with any honest person's position on the matter of ILLEGAL ALIENS and CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY. I'll shoot a white boy, a black boy, a brown boy, or an Asian just as quickly for the same crime. It's the CRIMINAL conduct that is hurting the United States, not any change in demographics.
As for the percentage of dangerous criminals living in the US, you should check out Houston. Mayor White declared his city a "sanctuary" city for aliens. They don't get prosecuted for anything there, short of killing a cop. Go visit chron.com and see what's happening down there. Or, go to the statesman.com. Child prostitution, slave labor, drug running - the list goes on and on. Even if my estimate is high - it still 10% or better who are truly undesirable. There are at least 2 million scum of the earth living in my country, all of them having sneaked in from the far ends of Latin America.
Read the news from the cities across the border region. Activists try to cover it up, but there is a LOT of violence along the border, and as far as 300 miles north.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Homosexuality is a dead end, and it contributes to those more traditional groups gaining more and more strength, relative to the "civilized" nations and cultures. Gay marriage and the declining fertility rates go hand in hand. Whether it is causative or not, the correlation is there.
Jesus Christ, do you really think homosexuality will increase because it's legally recognized, or decrease if it's not?
Aside from that, overpopulation is not the solution to anything other than squandering all of our resources as quickly as possible. Have you ever considered that smaller families correlate with wealthy nations *because* small families better preserve wealth, and that large families perpetuate or increase the likelihood of poverty? Go ahead and have 8 kids, have a lower standard of living (for you and your kids), take up a disproportionate amount of per-household resources on the educational system and any other social or community services your avail yourself of, and retire at 75. I'm sure we'll all be better off(?!?) for it because we'll outnumber the gooks and the wetbacks.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
If you have a non-geek girlfriend or wife have her explain the "rules" of fashion. She may end up thinking you're culturally challenged.
I wish Slashdot had killfiles. How I miss the days of Usenet...
^ Deary, I.J.; Irwing, P.; Der, G; Bates, T.C. (2005). "Brother-sister differences in the g factor in intelligence: Analysis of full, opposite-sex siblings from the NLSY1979". Intelligence 35:451-456.
There you go, have a citation for male IQ results having a higher variance than female.
You realize that the ^ at the beginning of the line gives away the fact that you copied that cite verbatim from Wikipedia, right? I'm guessing without reading it to see whether it actually said what Wikipedia claimed?
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
Open your eyes, and look at what is going on. There is conflict in this world that you don't see, and are happy to remain blissfully unaware of.
You seem to be blissfully paraphrasing the Matrix.
Flamebait? Really? Okay, maybe the snarky Y chromosome thing, but come on, that's supposed to be humor.
The bit about the test being biased though, that's really pretty straight forward and honest. We all like to pretend that everyone is equal, and they should be in the eyes of the law, but reality is not equality. I'm far more reliable, wise and trustworthy than I was twenty years ago, and that's me compared to me. There are millions (probably billions) of people that I'd be considered smarter than, and likewise a similar number of people I'd be considered less intelligent than. That's inequality, it's not fair and it's the truth.
The test in this case (and yes, I actually read all of the article before posting) is the evaluation of testing in schools and various scores on other areas, but those scores do not necessarily reflect intelligence, in fact, intelligence tests don't necessarily reflect intelligence. Intelligence isn't some ruler that you stand someone's brain against to get a measurement, it is a combination of a variety of reasoning, memory, communication and recognition skills. No test is useful which is also free of the criticism of bias.
Disagree with me if you like, there is plenty of room within reasonable discourse and certainly both logical and statistical room to do so, but mislabeling, that's just petty.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Excuse me.. who are you to tell me what "moron" means when you don't even know what "sheeple" are? =P Sheeple = sheep people. People who can't be arsed to think for themselves, who readily gobble up any random rumor and hearsay as unequivocal fact. People who aren't strictly speaking stupid, as in lacking mental capacity to learn, comprehend and understand, but for some reason I utterly fail to understand choose to remain ignorant.
I'm no English literature professor so I might very well be wrong, but I don't think "Moron" has a very strict definition? If you do something stupid and foolish, something you should have been able to see would not end well, you are a moron. In this specific case, I had a couple of people I know in mind. People who in all seriousness think the world is coming to an end in 2012, exactly like the movie 2012, because of global warming. They are morons.
Of course intelligence is a made up concept. Exactly like mass, volume, charge, etc. in that they exist but the terms are simply things we have invented to classify information around us. You cannot state that a test designed to rate a persons ability to solve a certain type of task is useless at rating people's ability to, well.. solve that certain type of task! I don't mean to be rude but if you fail to see the logical fallacy of that argument, Sir, I think you might be at the lower end of the Bell curve.
An IQ test is made to evaluate a person's mental ability within a certain set of categories, like logic, language, spatial awareness, math, memory, etc. As such, a high IQ equates to ability within those areas, and opposite a low IQ usually means your general understanding of things logical, mathematical, etc. is low.
Why do we even argue about this? It's perfectly logical.
+1 for tongue-in-cheek humor. I came, I saw, I lol'd.
Do not disturb. Already disturbed. http://www.teaaddictedgeek.com
a small percentage of really slutty women are taking up the slack for the rest of them.
Not even close to true.
There was a study in NY that was looking at herpes rates. I'm sure you've heard the "1 in 5" rate for herpes, but in NY it's 1 in 4. But don't be mislead that there are the same odds across the board. What you'll find is that a minority of men have herpes, while a majority of women do. Yes, I'm sure some "genius" is going to come here saying that women catch STDs easier than men do, but women still can't catch herpes unless they have sex with someone who has herpes!
So that either means that women are going lesbian all over the place, or the "myth" that 80% of women sleep with 20% of men has gained some statistical backing. I'm leaning towards the latter. (FYI, the herpes rates for black women and black men was 80% and 25%, respectively).
Smart men build weapons.
Smart women know not to use them.
Right, which is why a solid majority of female senators voted to invade Iraq, and one of them, Hillary Clinton, talked about "totally obliterating" Iran.
So not considering every single woman as "wholesome" translates as "you hate all women" to you? Wow, you should be a spin doctor for Fox news.
"But this one goes to 11!"
"Excuse me.. who are you to tell me what "moron" means when you don't even know what "sheeple" are? =P Sheeple = sheep people."
Hey, I thought it was a typo and I was just being nice. Sorry I'm not up to date on the list of silly made-up words.
"Of course intelligence is a made up concept. Exactly like mass, volume, charge, etc. in that they exist but the terms are simply things we have invented to classify information around us."
Really? In what physical laws is intelligence a variable?
You guys. Me woman. I've been reading /. regularly for several years, and this is my first post (to the sausage fest). I can't recall seeing a post in a woman's perspective. Most /. posts have a decidedly male tone. Don't you think? (no pun intended)
I had my boys in private boys schools, until I ran short of money. Separate-gender schooling was the best investment ever. No regrets, even if I couldn't afford to have them graduate.
Raising men's or lowering women's ego and self-esteem to meet expectations of "perceptions" may apply to other areas besides intelligence. For example, perceptions about body image (weight, age, & beauty), or when you go outside traditional maie-female roles. Double standards are found many places.
You seem to be arguing just for the sake of argument. Intelligence isn't a part of physics but again you are making a rather half-assed argument.
IQ is a measure of certain properties of a brain (or rather, a mind), which is a very complex system. Mass, volume and charge are measurements in a different system. That one system has more easily defined rules and easily measured properties doesn't in any way invalidate our way of measuring properties of another, completely different system. If that is your best argument.. well, I can't help you.
You can make whatever outrageous claims you want. It won't change the fact that if you rate someone's ability to solve crosswords you get a score representing.. *drumroll* that person's ability to solve crosswords! *GASP!* The same thing goes for an IQ test, which rates your ability to solve logical, spacial and mathematical problems, memorize and categorize, etc. to give you a score showing how good you are at solving those tasks.
Houston, today. Read. It's certainly NOT an isolated incident.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6760853.html
Read the Chron, the Statesman, the Dallas Morning News - check those Texas papers frequently. The interstates are filled with human traffickers. A steady stream of humanity flows out of Mexico, hauling people around for this sort of purpose. Two babies were abandoned in a field recently in Texas. Life means little to these scum - unless it is their own life at stake.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Women aren't any less intelligent than men, and they think they are less intelligent because they spend their entire lives being told (overtly and subliminally) that the aren't as smart as men.
You're aware rape isn't about sex right?
I'm aware that there is a feminist dogma that states such, yes.