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The Brains of Men and Women Are 'Wired Differently'
Rambo Tribble writes "Research out of the University of Philadelphia concludes there are major differences in the neural pathways in the brains of men and women. Men, they say, are wired more front-to-back, women more side-to-side. 'The results establish that male brains are optimized for intrahemispheric and female brains for interhemispheric communication. The developmental trajectories of males and females separate at a young age, demonstrating wide differences during adolescence and adulthood. The observations suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes.' They propose this may explain why women have been found to be better multitaskers. Of course, this may also have ramifications for what skill and career proclivities each sex exhibits."
And the poisonous ideologies invented to justify it, and the pervasive violence employed to enforce it. For women's liberation through socialist revolution! Abolish the family!
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Don't tell me! Men and women might be different!?!?!?!?!?
... sometimes centuries ahead of society, sometime millenniums behind..
Water is wet.
The thing about people who go into STEM, they like solving problems.... 'it is what it is', is rarely a good reason to not examine and improve something.
female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes
Ah, this must explain why most programmers are women.
Then why was the ratio closer decades ago?
Some of the best database and analytics people I've had the honor of working with are women, and wouldn't be surprised if their gender gives them an advantage at times.
No! Men and women are EQUAL, dammit! I'm not listening, lalalalalala...!
..is still dwarfed by the differences between individuals of a gender. None of these articles about statistical differences will ever justify the prejudices and social roles some people want to enforce on others to make things simpler.
As the article notes, the pathways being studied can change throughout life.
Presumably they change to fit the tasks the person spends most time on.
So... it seems plausible that the pathways reflect gender stereotypes because gender stereotypes created them in the first place.
What about people whose brains are "intersexed" - the brain analog to those whose reproductive organs are neither wholly male nor wholly female?
What about the mistaken social assumptions that come when a person is physically one gender and self-identifies as that gender (i.e NOT a traditional "transgender" person) but whose brain is wired the other way?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So a study noted some interesting neurological structural differences, which is cool.
What is likely to be not cool are the coming comments about how this is just more evidence that divides in fields like STEM, management, finance, etc, are somehow the result of natural drives/talents and that women really do just want to be relegated to the low paid, low respect fields which have minimal chances for advancement, and that they are paid less because they are simply less capable.
" is a huge leap to extrapolate from anatomical differences to try to explain behavioural variation between the sexes. Also, brain connections are not set and can change throughout life."
So... basically this could be 100% enculturation and there could be zero genetic differences. This is essentially the equivalent of pointing out that people who do a lot of running have strikingly different looking cells in their leg muscles than people who sit on the couch all day. Jumping to the runners being born with different leg muscles might not be the correct answer.
As I understand it, the brain is highly adaptive. This begs the question that early conditioning and training may very well have long term consequences to how our brains develop. If boys and girls are subjected to different stimuli and expectations, it follows that their brains are also going to develop differently. Or, to be more blunt, any change in development trajectories that happen after birth could be due to different biology just as well as environmental pressure on the child. This, naturally, makes it very difficult when one wants to consider which is cause and which is effect.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
There has actually been some rather cool work with brainscans of transgendered people, and often they will show neurological structures indicative of the sex they feel rather then the one their primary and secondary sex characteristics indicate.
Gay and lesbian generally just show up as whatever cis body they are.
ummm.... what?
perhaps you mean transgendered individuals but a gay man is still a man and a lesbian is still a woman. It would be interesting to look at transgendered individuals but I suspect that if the difference is caused by nurture and not nature that you would still see these effects in transgendered people because most of them do grow up in their birth gender and only transition later in life.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Different wiring for different sexes does not in itself imply genetic predetermination but might as well be a consequence of differences in what challenges grown ups are likely to present to the child. ... Oh! I see Heidi Johansen-Berg says something to that effect as well in the last paragraph - good!
send + more == money?
Think in iPhlish or Andrian auto corrected terms
send + more == money?
"It is what it is" only because we're still getting out of the dark ages where women were being held back. I'm not saying that it will gravitate towards 50 percent and then stay there, but it will certainly change.
These studies are only trying to explain why there are differences between the sexes. This is news for nerds, stuff that matters. Personally I've always wondered exactly why I've found I could handle multiple projects much more easily than my male co-workers. Just getting a "you're a girl, duh" response is pointless. Back that up with some research and now you're cooking!
Also, this could also show why a corpus callosotomy can be more problematic for females than males.
"some of the best" sounds like a sub-sample of the population. You can easily have a lower average and a higher standard deviation simultaneously.
Ezekiel 23:20
I'm in two minds about having to walk around with a corpus callostomy bag.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Spatial skills for men, verbal dexterity for women. Got it, thanks. But tell men what sex feels like for a woman and women what it feels like for a man. Only then can we bridge the divide between the genders.
Scott, I'll have to agree, I'd much prefer looking at the female of our species in a meeting than looking at you.
Advantage, hers.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I think GP misspoke, but it doesn't mean that it wouldn't be interesting to see how homosexuals compare with heterosexuals of the same sex in this quality, in addition to looking at transgendered.
what implications this has for sexual preference & gender self-identification ? I expect that there is full spectrum of "wiring diagrams" not just male=front/back & female=left/right just as there is a full spectrum of gender identification. Could there be a direct correlation, even causation? Somebody please prove that sexual preference and gender identity is hard-wired by cerebral development and let's shut up the religious asshats once and for all.
The problem when discussing gender differences is that there is no stereotypical male or stereotypical female.
The difference in genetic makeup between the average male and the average female is LESS than the difference between one individual and another individual.
Trying to create more "gender ghettos" is the wrong response. Here at the UW there are many women engineers and scientists, and not in the fields old fogies think they "should" be in.
We are all individuals. How we use what we have differs, but that doesn't make it "better".
It's like a study on Mergers and Aquisitions reported today saying boards with only one female member were less likely to do a merger than boards with all male members - the problem is that mergers are usually a bad idea for shareholder value in the first place.
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Sorry to burst your pretend bubble but: do they have an X and Y chromosome or not? The end.
Yeah, sorry, but nature leaves humanity much more mixed up than your simple world view wishes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRY Have fun learning about "XX males" and "XY females"!
Did we need a study for this?
Citation....desired. I really don't mean to be a dick, I am really curious to read more about this. I actually have a few tranny friends and find this pretty interesting. One of the people in their circle of friends actually found out, at somewhere around 40 years old, that desipite being outwardly born male, she actually had ovaries!
I always find this interesting because I tend to be a bit gender blind. I never really had this strong notion of basic mental differences and ability differences between men and women. As it turns out women I get along with well, including my own wife, tend to identify themselves as tomboys, but, I never really notice or think of them that way.
so it starts coming down to.... what causes these differences? The brain changes all the time based on what we do. You can find differences in brain connectivity just based on people's activities and lifestyles. So.... is it hormonal? (maybe not if the transgender thing translates to these connections), is it social? (women and men socialize in different groups that tend to do different things, and so, grow different types of connections?)
another interesting question is when and how this happens. If a transexual is more like their claimed sex than their outwardly visible one.... is that innate? or does that come from years of practice at trying to be the opposite sex?
One observation I have made is that.... well... I don't like young trannies, they annoy me. What annoys me, and this goes for both MTF and FTM is that (and I am generalizing) they tend to take on a characture of the gender they want to emulate. Some younger, less experienced FTMs tend towards being loud, overtly macho. Likewise MTFs tend towards well... acting like they learned to be a woman from watching Zsa Zsa Gabore (get off my lawn). You kinda get the idea they are overacting, faking it a bit. Its a vibe I don't get at all from older trannies who are more experienced.
This makes me think.... maybe its in fact acting out our expected social roles that changes the brain in these ways? Or maybe its a feedback loop, a bit of the chicken, a bit of the egg.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Which is why we have so many top ranked women going into STEM fields here at the UW. People who want to become engineers or work in genetics want to do that.
Putting artificial barriers in their way by saying "women should not be engineers or do science" is the wrong message.
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>because gender and sexuality are social constructs
WTF?
There may be social constructs around gender and sexuality, but for sure no body's bits change gender when they move to a new social situation. Gender and Sexuality are physical constructs. Don't try and inject your social construct voodoo into physical reality.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Actually, I think some of the "sterotypically male" STEM fields here at the UW have more women than men in them - both at the undergrad and graduate level.
2014 is coming whether 2000 wants it to come or not. Adapt or die.
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Don't fix what isn't broken is a good reason.
Please tell me you're not in IT, because clearly you don't know what preventative maintenance is.
Putting artificial barriers in their way by saying "X number of women should be engineers or do science" is equally wrong.
The day we cure death will be a very sad day for humanity.
See the book "Unlocking the Clubhouse" for how high-achieving girls fascinated by computers suffer a death by a thousand cuts and switch fields despite their preference.
Actually the sky isn't blue ... it only "looks" blue.
Well, there's this one, but by "multitasking" one generally means "switching between multiple tasks is progress" rather than "simultaneous attention to different tasks," and the study indicates women may be better at the former.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Putting artificial barriers in their way by saying "women should not be engineers or do science" is the wrong message.
So... I take it you're not a fan of Affirmative Action?
Can't say I disagree with that.
FWIW, I don't think anyone is actually saying women shouldn't be engineers, just pointing out that, from a biological physiology standpoint, they aren't wired to think about problems the same way men do.
Hell, IMO that's a good reason for them to become engineers and scientists - preaching to the choir is good for the ego, but not so much for accurate, unbiased research.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
that should be "multiple tasks in progress"
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Men and women are equal.
- The IRS
I come here for the love
I was also interested and did a quick Google search and found a few different results:
Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus
White matter microstructure in female to male transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment. A diffusion tensor imaging study.
It seems as though there are some differences in the brain for transgendered individuals in that areas of their brain are more similar to the gender that they think they are rather than the brain of the gender that typically corresponds with their biological sex. It also appears (at least from these studies) that hormone therapy is not responsible for those changes. There isn't anything to suggest what causes this to occur, so it could be biological or social, but I doubt it would be largely due to social causes as that would seem to imply that people could become far more intelligent simply by acting like a genius. At the same time, I don't think it's genetic (or entirely so) either as it intuitively seems as though being transgendered probably produces a less fit individual as I can't imagine having to cope with your brain telling you that you're in the wrong body for your whole life making life easier, especially if everyone else treats you as though you're insane.
Simon LeVay also published some similar research about 20 years ago that examined differences in the brains of homosexual and heterosexual men, so some of that research might also provide some insight into what might cause the observed differences.
Tranny is usually considered to be an offensive term....
Then come up with one that's equally descriptive, equally memorable, and not offensive to anyone.
Good luck with that.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Citation....desired
I'd like to see that myself; Not that I find the idea that a person with XX chromosomes would exhibit the internal physiology of a person with XY chromosomes impossible, but it does seem unlikely.
Then again, maybe our conscious minds have more control over unconscious functions than we realize.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
By and large, men are physically more powerful -- by a very large margin. Over the vast majority of history, that physical power has been both a key factor in survival, making the male indispensable to the household, and consequently a means to dominate the family unit that could not be excised -- at the same time, it isn't something that depends upon superior cognitive function.
It is only (very) recently that females have become broadly able to support a household without benefit of a male presence. If women are to dominate due to any particular cognitive advantage, they've only just entered the race and it'll most likely be some time yet before we see the results, both due to cultural inertia and learning curves.
There's no telling what women may be capable of as yet in terms of exceeding male performance; they've barely had a few decades to try things on, and they're still being held back by religion, chauvinism, and the divisive backwards ride that sexual-role focused feminism took them on.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
... the brain of those transsexuals, those XXY, those XYY people, how their brains have been wired ?
Instead of from front to back or side to side, how their brains are being wired ??
3/10 - You made an effort to obfuscate but were still obvious troll.
In my experience, men are far better than women at multitasking.
I'll never understand why people claim the opposite.
Because, scientifically speaking, no human is capable of true multitasking.
What we are good at is switching between tasks rapidly.
Females in my experience will do them sequentially, in an order that suits them - if they hate vacuuming that gets done last.
Males in my experience will do them concurrently. Fill the sink, put the laundry in the washer, do one rack of dishes, take out the trash, put the laundry in the dryer, vacuum, put the dry dishes away and do the rest of the dishes, fold the laundry.
Not sure if trying to be funny or misogynistic... ?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
There is no University of Philadelphia, only a Philadelphia University, which would also be wrong.
The news is from the University of Pennsylvania.
Yes it's gone up quite a bit - the last two years have seen a sharp jump in undergrad female engineers. Just look at pics from our last two engineering days. They should still be online.
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The observations suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes.
To there?
Yes, so can we please stop pretending that it is a travesty that few women are interested in IT?
I did not say that. I'm just saying what I'm saying.
Stop trying to turn my words into something that backs up your personal choices.
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WTF is a "Tate?"
A PO...TA...TO... boil it, mash it, stick it in a stew.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
No one who is married needs to be told that men and women are wired differently.
For example, my wife seems to have a problem with my spending all my free-time playing Battlefield 4 and Need for Speed Rivals. She thinks family dinners and holiday celebrations and our anniversary should take precedence over a week of double-XP.
Clearly, her priorities are way out of whack. Yet, somehow it seems to work. Or at least it did until I stopped showering last Tuesday and she started insisting I sleep in the basement. But the joke's on her because that's where my gaming rig is set up.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"whereas female brains are designed..." Hold it right there, cowboy! Brains weren't designed, they evolved.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Usually I just use "trans people". Nobody seems to have much of an issue with that.
And in other news, gravity makes things fall down.
Wikipedia has a good summary of the brain studies:
Ta-da
A trivial amount of investigation would reveal that trans man/woman/person are the preferred terms. More descriptive than tranny, sufficiently "memorable," whatever that means, and completely inoffensive.
The brain and the body are masculinized/feminized at different times in the womb. An in-womb hormone mess-up could cause transsexualism and/or an intersex condition.
Considering how regularly and spectacularly biology fucks up, wouldn't it be more surprising if cross-sex fuck-ups didn't happen? Intersex people do exist, after all.
Define "true multitasking". The brain is not a single core processor. It is always multitasking. Also, I can rub my belly and tap my head simultaneously. While talking. And walking.
You know, when you say you have friends who are members of a group, and you use a slur for them, that tends to be unpersuasive.
Anyway, no, not the social roles, the differences don't appear to vary at all with hormone treatments, or how people have behaved, or whether they've transitioned or been living as one gender or the other. You can research this yourself, it should take about 5 seconds tops to think of a set of search terms that will get you lots of papers.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
How does it seem unlikely?
I mean, seriously. Do you honestly think that, alone among mammals, humans don't have sexual dimorphism in their brains along with the rest of their bodies, which produces instincts?
Because once you grant that the dimorphism exists, it's pretty obvious that sometimes it'll misalign with the rest of the body, same way things like that happen to all sorts of other things during development.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Lady parts = female. Male parts = male. This doesn't have anything to do with social constructs; it's reproductive biology, aka science.
Yes, there is a spectrum of intersex possibilities. That does not require us to do away with the notion of male and female. Personally, I'd like to see an option of "Other" along with "M" and "F" for IDs & such. Give everyone something to pick.
But to suggest that we need to tear down all of human society because of a few outliers is absurd.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
I was going to pose the same basic question. I, like you, have an easier time with women that are more masculine. Lesbians and I get along great, whereas gay men and I have no real interesting thing to do with each other; seems obvious but, again like you, I'd like to get a better understanding of it all. In a way I feel like a lesbian trapped in a man's body
In my opinion, our physical bodies are a mere reflection to a higher order of being that we do not consciously experience. Our very fiber of being manifests here physically, as there appears to be no other place to do so:) I don't think that this higher order of things has a "sex" to it as we commonly understand here in the physical realm. I think that the only word that we could use to define what you and I both appear to be trying to understand would be "direction", but in a different dimension, or realm. As we improve in our technology, we'll make more discoveries about the physical realm and how it relates to consciousness itself, and in doing so, we'll understand the differences between men and women. As it stands, we are left to contemplate these things. However I think it's an interesting question to pose: "How much would we procreate if the idea of 'sexes' were removed?" Like, how would you cope with "a dude with a vagina"? Or "a woman with a penis"? Right now, we need to be aroused by different things in order to procreate, and that arousal is subjective.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Yeah, well I find all the politically correct New Language offensive. (Okay, not so much offensive as stupid and infantile.)
I am a tranny, thank you very much. I have tranny friends who are just fine with 'tranny'. However, if someone I know doesn't like it, I will call them something else, because I was raised with some manners, after all. Just don't run around making assumptions about what other people will find offensive. I'm not going to remove useful words from my vocabulary because a few people don't like them.
Ever heard something about how it takes two to tango? In order for someone to give offense, someone else must *take* offense. That requires effort.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
The striking thing in this article isn't that we're different, but that our differences appear to be in a realm that is not physical, but is reflected in the physical realm.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
The differences are physical because neurology and genetics are physical. Possibly you refer to programming which is also physical but is often considered to be beyond or beside the physical somehow. In any case...
Men and women had different evolutionary pressures upon them and so sexual dimorphism exists. This has been a known fact of science and is patiently obvious...
We've only had this obscured because the ideological literalists have crept into the feminist movement and have concluded that for men and women to be given equal meritorious treatment in society they must be literally identical.
You see the same thing out of evangelical Christians when they insist the world is 6000 years old or that dinosaurs didn't exist because they aren't able to accept that maybe there were dinosaurs... and maybe the world is billions of years old... and yet maybe their god still created it all. The other religious factions don't seem to have a problem making that leap but literalists are annoying in this sort of discussion. Tragically irritating.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
"that would seem to imply that people could become far more intelligent simply by acting like a genius"
Which is kind of Edison's life story, isn't it?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
How in the world is "trans" stupid and infantile? Wouldn't adding "nny" to the end of it make it sound more juvenile?
Not all gay people find the word "fag" offensive, but enough do that polite people recommend against using it. If you're as polite as you claim to be, perhaps you should follow suit or at least not whine when others object to its use.
"Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences", Dr. Rebecca Jordon-Young.
The literature, on careful examination, turns out to be full of floating definitions, hidden assumptions, and outright discarding of data.
There are sexually dimorphic places in the hypothalamus, but it's really tough otherwise to tell a male brain from a female brain. The differences are a matter of overlapping bell curves at most.
>> They propose this may explain why women have been found to be better multitaskers
Citation please. This is not self-evident. In fact I for one don't believe that women are actually any better than men at multitasking.
From many personal observations I've come to a pretty much inescapable conclusion that while many women do clearly believe they can multitask well, in reality they perform each task very poorly (i.e. just as badly or even worse than men) when attempting to do them concurrently. If one of those tasks is driving, all the other road users better watch out.
Men seem more inclined to a sequential rather than concurrent approach, not because they can't multitask as well/badly as women, rather they want to do each task more properly. Again this is just my personal theory based on observing many real-life cases over 50 years, of which nearly all have pretty much (re)(re)(re)confirmed this.
> Then come up with one that's equally descriptive, equally memorable, and not offensive to anyone.
'Guy in a dress' seems to do the trick.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
>because gender and sexuality are social constructs
WTF?
There may be social constructs around gender and sexuality, but for sure no body's bits change gender when they move to a new social situation. Gender and Sexuality are physical constructs. Don't try and inject your social construct voodoo into physical reality.
Erm.. Some species of West African frogs have been know to change gender in a single sex environment.
Also, whilst you've got a point about gender (it is a physical trait) sexuality is a social trait. Different cultures have very different attitudes and approaches to sexuality, if you dont believe me, spend some time dating in a South American Christian country and then go to an Asian Buddhist country.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
... the brain of those transsexuals, those XXY, those XYY people, how their brains have been wired ?
Instead of from front to back or side to side, how their brains are being wired ??
Well women are wired side to side and men a wired front to back. So consider that a car engine can be mounted latitudinally (side to side) in a front wheel drive car or longitudinally (front to back) as in a rear wheel drive car, transsexuals would be all wheel drive.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
How did this get modded up? There is nothing "clearly" about your conclusion; not "fixing" something is completely different than not maintaining it.
It is probable "consensual copulation" is a relatively modern requirement for the propagation of one's genetic line.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
... oh yes, clearly the brain has to be the only organ not strongly shaped by genetics. 'cause that's so scientific.
It would but I never really thought about looking it up. Then again, the trans woman I have spent the most time with, is in her 50s and uses "tranny" and "tranny girl" like they are going out of style. Most of the other transfolk I have met have been through her (and the ones I knew before also were long time friends of her), so I guess I never really considered that they had appropriated a term others found offensive.
I mean now that I think about it, maybe she and one or two others are the only ones who use the term tranny and a few others do tend to say "trans" but...they always just seem more uptight.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
It is a continuum, but it is not flat. There are effectively two bells on the curve. Most men are more masculine than most women, and most women are more feminine than most men. I am sure the hormone bias follows closely. The corner cases you speak of only get the attention they do because certain political proponents' ideologies need the attention on them in order to make their own arguments appear more valid than they are.
Who? Socialists.
--
Tell that to feminists demanding societal concessions from men.
That seems to be what universities spend their research dollars on now.. That is, when they're not spending them trying to cherry pick facts that 'prove' the veracity of their hard left political positions...just like the christians do with the bible, evolution, and their beliefs. This article falls into the latter category, because while they 'proved' that men and women are neurologically different, the goal was to show women as being deeper, more cerebral thinkers.
-1,000,000
Failed to get reference.
No.
First off, gender is different to sexuality.
Secondly sexuality is a social construct. You need to go look up the meaning of the word because you seem to think it has something to do with the location of physical parts instead of how they're used.
For number 3, again, you need to go look up the definition of sexuality. You're wrong.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Don't know what to tell you, one persons slur is another persons self-applied label. Geek used to be an insult too. And retard was the clinical word invented because idiot became an insult. People can ignore intent and be offended at words if they like, I never found it very interesting and really counterproductive. Hell I still use the term marijuana despite knowing why it was coined too.
Anyway, thanks for the tiny bit of info and condescending remarks. Sorry I saw that someone had read something interesting and asked if they might be able to point me at what they read. I will certainly make absolutely no effort to not do that again.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
What if she isn't wearing a dress?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
There will certainly be abuses. There will be people who take and don't give back. And this should be prevented
I think this has been severely underemphasized and is missing a dynamic. There are compelling arguments to evaluate whether social justice is doing more harm than good. http://www.columbian.com/news/2013/dec/03/ideology-of-victimhood-hampers-those-at-the-bottom/
How much of this is genetic vs environmental? We know our brains can rewire themselves after accidents because they must. Perhaps they are wiring themselves in this "normal" way as we grow due to social influences.
It led me to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
You make some good points, but you also make some key questionable assumptions. Bill Gates was himself born a millionaire (trust fund from banker granddad) and also he did not write most of the software he resold, and what he wrote,he wrote based on knowledge gained in part from dumpster diving to find program listings from a computer center. Without his mother's knowing someone at IBM, he probably would not have gotten the deal for an OS for the IBM PC. IBM probably would have been better off using an in-house Forth that had been written bu David Frank, or Unix like the CS-9000, but suffered from internal politics.
The deep question is what part of the the fruits of our infrastructure (air, water, farmland, roads, machines, seeds, internet, books, software, ICs, etc.) should be shared equally (not "means-tested") and what part should somehow be used to "reward" hard work or risk taking or whatever. So you make an assumption with being "OK" with a huge wealth disparity whatever its cause (in this case, Bill Gates indeed being bright and hard working, but also rich from birth and part of a socially well-connected family). But another point of view might be that, say, half the economic output of the USA should be shared equally (US$25K per person per year) as social security payments from birth as a "basic income", and the other half should then be "earned"or divided based on effort or merit somehow.
Dan Pink questions the whole notion of financial reward as a motivator for intellectual work (even as we all need some money to survive and thrive in this culture we have built):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
See also:
http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/
"William Henry Gates III made his best decision on October 28, 1955, the night he was born. He chose J.W. Maxwell as his great-grandfather. Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III. In some of the later lessons, you will be encouraged to take entrepreneurial risks. You may find it comforting to remember that at any time you can fall back on a trust fund worth many millions of 1998 dollars. "
On Bill Gates and dumpster diving:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=437640&cid=22255952
Bill Gates made a lot of money by damaging the community of people freely sharing knowledge and software with each other, while hypocritically pleading poverty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
Often people can make a lot of money by disempowering other people and disrupting communities.
That said, is Windows a useful standard given its backward compatibility? Yes it is (as much as I don't like to have to admit that).
The JK Rowling story is more complex too. Many people write amazing stories, but few get widely published by the nature of our publishing industry. Still, her story is a good example of the value of a "basic income" to promote creativity. ... "In fact," harrumphs the Yorkshire Post, "this middle-class English girl with an Exeter University degree and a career as a teacher didn't try to dispel the myth that she'd been a penniless, single mother." ..."
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/27/1030053057866.html
"Too good, it turns out. Yes, Rowling was a single mother with a bad marriage behind her, and yes, she was briefly on the dole. But the coffee shop was owned by her brother-in-law and Rowling was never far from her middle-class origins.
If the dole effectively promotes the arts effectively in a compassionate way, then why do we have copyright instead?
In a world of
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I really think I may start using wikipedia as my first stop before google. We seem to be rapidly reaching the point where everything I want to know is already in there.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus!
Also is it just me or does this sound like Phrenology. Maybe because of all the speculation based postulations made in the summary.
"Oh yes! That side to side 'brain wiring' is the cause of your problem right there. That clearly makes you better at multitasking. While your friend with the more 'front to back wiring', well there be dragons..."
Whoa....and this one really makes my head whirl:
"Perhaps more remarkably, two-thirds of FTM transsexuals reported the sensation of a phantom penis from childhood onwards, replete with phantom erections and other phenomena"
I mean, I thought Phantom limb made sense. You had a limb, its gone, the brain has trouble adjusting to the fact its getting no input where it used to and senses a limb that doesn't exist. However, to sense a limb that you never had? I don't even know what to make of that.
Based on everything I have heard and talked with people about its been clear that transsexualism has some manner of deep and biological basis, but the idea that it actually extends that deeply into kinaesthetic sense is boggling; and kind of horrifying.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Define "true multitasking"./p>
Consciously focusing on more than one task simultaneously. It's harder than you think; in fact, according to scientific consensus, it's physically impossible for humans to do.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
"Tranny" is not just a label that implies transsexual, it specifically implies a transsexual *prostitute* which is why most transsexuals would be offended to be so labeled. Just as most women do not like to be called whores. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but your post does seem rather hard to believe. Either you know several transexual friends who are all either prostitutes or do not mind being called such, or you just made this all up. Occam's razor is gently calling...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
But with practice, you can do many tasks without conscious focus.
"Of course, this may also have ramifications for what skill and career proclivities each sex exhibits."
> "Tranny" is not just a label that implies transsexual, it specifically implies a transsexual *prostitute*
> which is why most transsexuals would be offended to be so labeled.
Hmm interesting. I often forget about the prostitution link. Only time I ever ran into that sort of tranny was walking drunk in the city with a friend of mine who decided to pretend he didn't realize she was a transsexual just to get a reaction (same friend; someone used a gay slur in his presence to refer to someone else, and he put his arm around me and started talking with a lisp until the guy stormed off)
> Either you know several transexual friends who are all either prostitutes or do not mind being
> called such, or you just made this all up.
Actually that may be part of it....I mean they are not prostitutes (or if they are, none ever indicated it to me) however I don't really think any of them would look down on a prostitute either. Though the more I think of it, I can only think of one or maybe two individuals who self-applied tranny or used it to refer to the whole group. One of them is also quite openly a kinky sub, so it may be why she likes the term?
Course the funny thing is, in years of hanging out with them, its never really come up. Though, unless we are discussing a topic like this, the distinction of whether a person is trans or not is generally not that useful, and even less so when the event you are attending is 1/3 or more transsexuals. We are usually talking about other things.... or doing something like... engaging in the first documented re-enactment of flying artillery by a pony girl pulling a real (if small) cannon. It was admittedly, neither well disciplined nor well executed, but, we are pretty sure it was a first.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Define "true multitasking"./p>
Consciously focusing on more than one task simultaneously. It's harder than you think; in fact, according to scientific consensus, it's physically impossible for humans to do.
Horse shit.
Show me a scientific definition of multitasking that jives with your own, then show me a "scientific consensus" that shows humans can't do that shit.
People who trot out "scientific consensus" instead of actual fucking science are clowns who should be ignored.
Have you never taken a phone call while having sex? Eaten while watching TV? Played a shitty game on your phone while squeezing out a turd? Watched TV and replied to an email? Driven while talking to a passenger? Looked at things and also heard things? If you can't fucking multi task at all, you're a retard, plain and simple.
Define "true multitasking"./p>
Consciously focusing on more than one task simultaneously. It's harder than you think; in fact, according to scientific consensus, it's physically impossible for humans to do.
Horse shit.
Show me a scientific definition of multitasking that jives with your own, then show me a "scientific consensus" that shows humans can't do that shit.
Take your pick:
https://www.google.com/search?q=can+humans+multitask
People who trot out "scientific consensus" instead of actual fucking science are clowns who should be ignored.
Have you never taken a phone call while having sex? Eaten while watching TV? Played a shitty game on your phone while squeezing out a turd? Watched TV and replied to an email? Driven while talking to a passenger? Looked at things and also heard things? If you can't fucking multi task at all, you're a retard, plain and simple.
You keep using that term, but I don't think it means what you think it means.
Also, if you think being an unholy, childish asshole about it just because someone on the internet disagrees with you somehow helps you gain credibility, or makes you seem like the 'smart guy' in this discussion, you're dead wrong, fella. Insults are the bastion of the ignorant.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
But with practice, you can do many tasks without conscious focus.
I suppose it is possible, but I haven't seen any empirical data to confirm the conclusion.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
That's not the same thing; if you read the article you linked to, in the first paragraph they point out that intersex anomalies such as hermaphroditism result from "combinations of chromosomal genotype and sexual phenotype other than XY-male and XX-female."
I'm talking specifically about XY and XX chromosome groups. People with Turner Syndrome and the like are not included, for obvious reasons.
Also, a link to a Wikipedia entry doesn't really qualify as empirical evidence, especially when discussing topics of which people tend to have very strong leanings (because they'll pollute the Wiki entry with their opinions instead of facts).
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Wikipedia is a good starting point. I credited you with intelligence to know that, and with the ability to follow links to cited articles and also query a bit on google.
Hermaphroditism is but a subset of intersex, fyi. All hermaphrodites and pseudo-hermaphrodites are intersexed, but not vice versa. It is possible to have ovaries and be XY, or to have testes and be XX, and likewise any combination with XXY, XXXY, XX/XY, and so on.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It is possible to have ovaries and be XY, or to have testes and be XX,
Yup, that's what I want to see a citation for.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Doesn't really roll off the tongue like 'straight,' 'gay,' or 'tranny' does.
I think being monosyllabic is probably important. Plus, "guy in a dress" might be offensive to transvestites going in the other direction, and "lady in pants" is a bit too broad.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
How does it seem unlikely?
Probability.
Because if sexual dimorphism wasn't unlikely, conditions such as hermaphroditism wouldn't be anomalies, they would be commonplace.
But genetic anomalies outside the XX and XY norm aren't what I'm talking about.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Switching between tasks really, really fast.
Of course, it's not me you're arguing with, it's the scientific community:
https://www.google.com/search?q=can+humans+multitask
Take it up with them if the fact that what you call multitasking isn't really multitasking, because they're the ones making the claim. I'm just parroting it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Considering how regularly and spectacularly biology fucks up, wouldn't it be more surprising if cross-sex fuck-ups didn't happen?
Yes it would.
It would be equally surprising of those cross-sex fuck-ups weren't anomalies.
but I'm not talking about anomalous genetic issues like someone having XXY or XO chromosomes; I'm specifically referring to people who would have an XX-male pair (and vice versa, of course), but exhibit physiological indications that the person was actually female, such as irregularly high estrogen output, or the whole cross-brain-thinking thing we're discussing in this specific thread.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'm specifically referring to people who would have an XX-male pair (and vice versa, of course).
Ha, who'd have thought that a simple typo would lead me to find the answer I've been looking for?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
As I said, so some research. One would be surprised that someone with the username "can has do it yourself" wants to be spoon fed, but then, this is /.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
but then, this is /.
That explains the snarky, bitchy, holier-than-thou attitude from pseudo-intellectuals who think they know what they're talking about, but are, in reality, completely off-base. Lord help y'all actually help someone else and educate yourself in the process; no, no, gotta keep that 3rd grade, false sense of intellectual superiority "Well, I know all about it, but I'm not gonna tell you. :P"
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Hmm, an IS person doesn't know anything about IS conditions, and someone who isn't denies the conditions exist, and won't do the most basic research?
Wow. Just, wow.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
...then gay-conversion therapy has a rational basis.
Look, if people can be naturally different in sexual proclivity, then people can be naturally different in interests and career choices. To pretend like the only reason that women participate in varying percentages in various industries is due to cultural factors is opening the gate to the assertion that the only reason men are attracted to men in varying percentages is due to cultural factors, not inherent biological ones.
Of course bro-gramming harassment is bad. Of course some women have crappy, unfair experiences. But simply because a black teenager plays the knockout game and assaults a jewish grandma doesn't mean that every black teenager is a thug.
I expect men and women to be different. The question is, are you able to appreciate those differences, or are you determined to override them by any means necessary?
Hmm, an IS person doesn't know anything about IS conditions, and someone who isn't denies the conditions exist, and won't do the most basic research?
Wow. Just, wow.
Oh, so I guess being black automatically makes a person know everything there is to know about, say, sickle-cell anemia? And autistic kids, they know everything there is to know about autism, right?
Just because you're a minority doesn't give you the right to be a bigot, you know. Well, no more than anyone else.
FTR, I never said you "didn't know anything" about the topic, I disagreed with how you, subjectively, classify XX-male and XY-female syndrome. A sentiment to which you immediately attacked me over, rather than so much as attempting to engage in intelligent discourse. That's on you, not me.
Getting a smart mouth, throwing out ad hominems and out-right lies about what I said don't strengthen your position, they weaken it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese