> The difference in genetic makeup between the average male and the average female is LESS than the difference between one individual and another individual.
No that is a myth based on bad statistics. Sure there are outliers but the average differences between the sexes are much greater than within the sexes when you look across the whole range of eg personality dimensions.
An example: in WWII it is universally acknowledged that the German soldiers were abut 40% more effective that those from the US. That is, with the same equipment and tactical advantages, you would need more than 40% more US soldiers than Germans to win a battle. The gap to English, French and Italians was even higher.
Yet, the worst German battalion was worse than the best US battalion. So the extreme of the range within the German army was wider than the average difference between the US and German soldiers. This in spite of the existence of large and consistent differences.
A lot of people in this thread are unhappy with the truth: while there are individual exceptions **there are large and consistent differences between men and women**.
The existence of neuroplasticity does not negate this. We also have muscular plasticity - if you do weightlifting you will get stronger. However men are still on average a lot stronger than women.
This is not true. The differences between the sexes are greater than the average differences between individuals. Some researchers have tried to obfuscate this fact by taking differences one at a time, rather than holistically. When you do a multi-factorial analysis of differences between the sexes versus the average differences between individuals, the sexes are clearly different. This is the case for example with strength and endurance, also with personality traits.
I am perfectly happy that if, eg a woman wants to be a physicist, then all power to her. However it is not realistic to expect that 50% of people in such fields will be women. This recognition is *not* the same thing as "enforc"ing social roles.
Most of the 'sources' are typical citation fraud ie someone makes a claim based on nothing much, and everyone else cites this as evidence.
Here is the section from the link you quoted that has the most and most credible citations:
> Though anger and power are believed, by some academics, to be the primary motivation for most rapes,[9] in 1994, Richard Felson coauthored the controversial book "Aggression and Coercive Actions: A Social-Interactionist Perspective" with James Tedeschi, a book which argues that sexual fulfillment is the motive of rapists, rather than the aggressive desire to dominate the victim.[10] Felson believes that rape is an aggressive form of sexual coercion and the goal of rape is sexual satisfaction rather than power. Most rapists do not have a preference for rape over consensual sex.[11][12][13][14][15][16] In one study, male rapists evaluated with penile plethysmography demonstrated more arousal to forced sex and less discrimination between forced and consensual sex than non-rapist control subjects, though **both groups responded more strongly to consensual sex scenarios**.[17]
This is consistent with the theme in pornography that the most important thing is that the woman must appear to want it and to enjoy it. There is a relatively small genre of dominance porn, but that is a small minority. And there is probably more FemDom (woman is domanant) porn than male dominant porn.
No-one argues that there are no rapes motivated by anger, or revenge, or madness, or whatever. But this in no way justifies the radical feminist view that rape **is about power not sex**.
When you actually look at the evidence, this seems unlikely.For example, rapes are mostly of fertile young women and rape rates correlate closely with fertily. Less than 5% of rapes are women over 45 years old.
> Statistically, only a very small number of rape accusations turn out to be fabricated.
This is greatly disputed. Even feminist will admit that 2-8% of rape accusations are false, which is a non-trivial fraction. Serving police officers in the field of sexual assault tend to think the number is more like 40%.
On balance it looks like her story is more likely. But we are trying to make our minds up based on very little evidence. It is OK to say "I don't know". This does not mean you don't believe anyone - it just means you don't know for sure. Many people have been executed and many have served long sentences for crimes they did not commit.
You missed the point,which is that the rules are such that any woman (but not a man) can take offence at normal conversation and cause major grief for you. Not every woman will use that power but some will. How lucky are you feeling? Thus even though notallwomenarelikethat, the situation is risky. Just the way marriage is now very dangerous for men.
> As for Einstein, I have a sneaking suspicion that life had worn him out.
Yes I think you are right about Einstein. I don't know why you have been downvoted.
Apart from the terrifying prospect of a long period of pain, ill health and dependency, he has largely become irrelevant to physics. His unified field theory had become a bit of a joke and no doubt his mental capacities had declined.
Sorry an extraneous URL got pasted into the above post. It should read
People are pretty bad at predicting what they will do in an unfamiliar situation.
For example, people typically tell Financial Planners that they are long term investors and will happily ride out any temporary fluctuations. The reality is that the vast majority of the population have a time-frame of less than 15 months and will panic in the face of a 30% drawdown.
Similarly most people say they would not have chemotherapy if they got cancer. However in the face of a real life-threatening illness, most people cling to life with everything they have.
My observation is that most people say they do not want to live to an excessive age, but if they are healthy and not poverty-stricken and have a good social connection, they usually don't want to die just yet.
We need to clearly distinguish extension of unhealthy old age, and extension and renewal of vitality and health. And of course if you are healthy and well, there is no reason to live in poverty - you could get a job.
People are pretty bad at predicting what they will do in an unfamiliar situation.
For example, people typically tell Financial Planners that they are long term investors and will happily ride out any temporary fluctuations. The reality is that the vast majority of the population have a time-frame of less than 15 months and will panic in the face of a 30% drawdown.
Similarly most people say they would not have chemotherapy if they got cancer. However in the face of a real life-threatening illness, most people cling to life with everything they have.
My observation is that most people say they do not want to live to an excessive age, but if they are healthy and not poverty-stricken and have a good social connection, they usually don't want to die just yet.
We need to clearly distinguish extension of uhttp://science.slashdot.org/story/12/08/27/1757251/how-long-do-you-want-to-live#nhealthy old age, and extension and renewal of vitality and health. And of course if you are healthy and well, there is no reason to live in poverty - you could get a job.
Like a lot of things, there are some ideas that take some getting used to, that can even seem counter-intuitive. And often our immediate emotional reactions differ from our views after a we have had time to digest some information and to think about the topic.
This! People tend to naturally assume that life extension is extension of old age, a time of pain, loss of capacity, and dependency.
If life extension is accompanied by a return to robust health, the whole situation changes. The question then becomes, at what age, given robust good health, would you choose to die? I don't see a lot of healthy 80-year-olds contemplating suicide, unless they have become socially isolated due to the death of friends and family.
People sometimes get angry at the idea of life extension. We have, most of us, come to a difficult accommodation with the fact that we are going to get old, get sick and die. Opening up that can of worms is not a comfortable experience.
If people really believe life extension is a bad thing, they should be arguing against research into Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Heart Disease, Cancer, which mostly affect old people. But they don't. People haven't thought about living for a very long time, but you generally find people want to stay healthy and, if healthy, they don't want to die just yet.
You seem to be proving my point about the bluntness and rudeness of people in hacker culture. If you are a woman, I note that women in hacker culture can also be blunt.
Politeness, if taken to excess, is indeed an enemy of truth. The whole concept of "the elephant in the living room" (that which we all know about but cannot discuss) demonstrates this.
> The first programmer is a womyn.
Not a single one of Ada Lovelace's programs would have worked. A person who has not written one program that works is not a programmer.
> The first high level programming language is written by a womyn.
The first production compiler was probably Fortran. The spec was written before Grace Hopper's Flow-matic prototype was written. And the production compiler was done first.
I'm not sure what this or your previous point has to do with anything. Women have made some contribution to science technology. The most impressive example, to my mind, was Noether's theorem.
Most real contributors of either sex get respect from their contributions and do not need to create drama over trivia (such as being asked do they want a cup of coffee).
>Do you walk up to men and ask for sex? >Do you touch other men all over and give them massages?
Women have done these things to me and not at bars either. BTW I am a guy.
My responses were a) (mostly) No I have a girlfriend. (sometimes) Yes! b) Ignored it and stood away from her in future.
While sexual assault is bad, I think that one can be too carried away with making sure everyone speaks in such a way that no-one can possibly be offended. "Your patch is lame and I will never commit it" would offend some people but it needs to be said.
First off, it is not a good idea to take women's advice about what attracts them. In fact it is a very bad idea. Attraction largely operates below the conscious level. What you see above is the rationalization hamster at work, concocting plausible sounding explanations that actually have very little value and much disinformation.
> 1) Believe it or not, a girl can *actually* be interested in you. No, I'm not kidding! You *don't* have to be a creeper!
Now the truth comes out. Here is the definition of "a creeper": someone a woman is not attracted to. It is not the behaviour that is creepy. the same behaviour can be creepy or not, based entirely on the woman's subjective response.
> no correction has been made for inflated error rates due to performing a large number of analyses
Also, the correlations for beleif in heaven and belief in hell are both large and of the opposite sign. A classic red flag for data mining, i.e. torturing the data until you get the result you want.
2. Garbage data
If you look at the article, it claims that Russia is a far more law-abiding country than Australia. However when you look at the one crime statistic that is very reliable, we see that Russian has 84 murders per day = 217 per million people per year. Australia has about 260 per year = 11 per million people per year. That is, Russia's murder rate is 20 times higher. Yet we are supposed to believe that Russia has a lower crime rate than Australia. If this is at all representative of the quality of their data, it is a sad joke.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently, if someone disagrees with feminist dogma they must be a misogynist!
> Lewontin's fallacy
This.
Amid all the wishful thinking and acts of imagination fueled by ideology, a voice of reason.
> The difference in genetic makeup between the average male and the average female is LESS than the difference between one individual and another individual.
No that is a myth based on bad statistics. Sure there are outliers but the average differences between the sexes are much greater than within the sexes when you look across the whole range of eg personality dimensions.
An example: in WWII it is universally acknowledged that the German soldiers were abut 40% more effective that those from the US. That is, with the same equipment and tactical advantages, you would need more than 40% more US soldiers than Germans to win a battle. The gap to English, French and Italians was even higher.
Yet, the worst German battalion was worse than the best US battalion. So the extreme of the range within the German army was wider than the average difference between the US and German soldiers. This in spite of the existence of large and consistent differences.
A lot of people in this thread are unhappy with the truth: while there are individual exceptions **there are large and consistent differences between men and women**.
The existence of neuroplasticity does not negate this. We also have muscular plasticity - if you do weightlifting you will get stronger. However men are still on average a lot stronger than women.
This is not true. The differences between the sexes are greater than the average differences between individuals. Some researchers have tried to obfuscate this fact by taking differences one at a time, rather than holistically. When you do a multi-factorial analysis of differences between the sexes versus the average differences between individuals, the sexes are clearly different. This is the case for example with strength and endurance, also with personality traits.
I am perfectly happy that if, eg a woman wants to be a physicist, then all power to her. However it is not realistic to expect that 50% of people in such fields will be women. This recognition is *not* the same thing as "enforc"ing social roles.
"Poor man wanna be rich. Rich man wanna be king. And the king ain't satisfied till he rules everything" Bruce Springsteen.
Most of the 'sources' are typical citation fraud ie someone makes a claim based on nothing much, and everyone else cites this as evidence.
Here is the section from the link you quoted that has the most and most credible citations:
> Though anger and power are believed, by some academics, to be the primary motivation for most rapes,[9] in 1994, Richard Felson coauthored the controversial book "Aggression and Coercive Actions: A Social-Interactionist Perspective" with James Tedeschi, a book which argues that sexual fulfillment is the motive of rapists, rather than the aggressive desire to dominate the victim.[10] Felson believes that rape is an aggressive form of sexual coercion and the goal of rape is sexual satisfaction rather than power. Most rapists do not have a preference for rape over consensual sex.[11][12][13][14][15][16] In one study, male rapists evaluated with penile plethysmography demonstrated more arousal to forced sex and less discrimination between forced and consensual sex than non-rapist control subjects, though **both groups responded more strongly to consensual sex scenarios**.[17]
This is consistent with the theme in pornography that the most important thing is that the woman must appear to want it and to enjoy it. There is a relatively small genre of dominance porn, but that is a small minority. And there is probably more FemDom (woman is domanant) porn than male dominant porn.
No-one argues that there are no rapes motivated by anger, or revenge, or madness, or whatever. But this in no way justifies the radical feminist view that rape **is about power not sex**.
Feminist boilerplate
> Rape is about ... power
Citation required.
When you actually look at the evidence, this seems unlikely.For example, rapes are mostly of fertile young women and rape rates correlate closely with fertily. Less than 5% of rapes are women over 45 years old.
> Statistically, only a very small number of rape accusations turn out to be fabricated.
This is greatly disputed. Even feminist will admit that 2-8% of rape accusations are false, which is a non-trivial fraction. Serving police officers in the field of sexual assault tend to think the number is more like 40%.
On balance it looks like her story is more likely. But we are trying to make our minds up based on very little evidence. It is OK to say "I don't know". This does not mean you don't believe anyone - it just means you don't know for sure. Many people have been executed and many have served long sentences for crimes they did not commit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect
> my experience (that people with stories like that generally aren't making them up)
This implies that:
A. You have experience of several similar events.
B. You were in a position to know with surety what happened in those events.
Please tell us more!
> even if you are "innocent"
ESPECIALLY if you are innocent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
The main reason older people don't like pulling 80 hour weeks (routinely) is that it is counter-productive.
> maybe the only thing added to engineering the last 10 years is unit testing.
Hmmm. There was an IEEE standard for unit testing in... 1987. A quarter century ago.
"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
You missed the point,which is that the rules are such that any woman (but not a man) can take offence at normal conversation and cause major grief for you. Not every woman will use that power but some will. How lucky are you feeling? Thus even though notallwomenarelikethat, the situation is risky. Just the way marriage is now very dangerous for men.
> As for Einstein, I have a sneaking suspicion that life had worn him out.
Yes I think you are right about Einstein. I don't know why you have been downvoted.
Apart from the terrifying prospect of a long period of pain, ill health and dependency, he has largely become irrelevant to physics. His unified field theory had become a bit of a joke and no doubt his mental capacities had declined.
Sorry an extraneous URL got pasted into the above post. It should read
People are pretty bad at predicting what they will do in an unfamiliar situation.
For example, people typically tell Financial Planners that they are long term investors and will happily ride out any temporary fluctuations. The reality is that the vast majority of the population have a time-frame of less than 15 months and will panic in the face of a 30% drawdown.
Similarly most people say they would not have chemotherapy if they got cancer. However in the face of a real life-threatening illness, most people cling to life with everything they have.
My observation is that most people say they do not want to live to an excessive age, but if they are healthy and not poverty-stricken and have a good social connection, they usually don't want to die just yet.
We need to clearly distinguish extension of unhealthy old age, and extension and renewal of vitality and health. And of course if you are healthy and well, there is no reason to live in poverty - you could get a job.
People are pretty bad at predicting what they will do in an unfamiliar situation.
For example, people typically tell Financial Planners that they are long term investors and will happily ride out any temporary fluctuations. The reality is that the vast majority of the population have a time-frame of less than 15 months and will panic in the face of a 30% drawdown.
Similarly most people say they would not have chemotherapy if they got cancer. However in the face of a real life-threatening illness, most people cling to life with everything they have.
My observation is that most people say they do not want to live to an excessive age, but if they are healthy and not poverty-stricken and have a good social connection, they usually don't want to die just yet.
We need to clearly distinguish extension of uhttp://science.slashdot.org/story/12/08/27/1757251/how-long-do-you-want-to-live#nhealthy old age, and extension and renewal of vitality and health. And of course if you are healthy and well, there is no reason to live in poverty - you could get a job.
Like a lot of things, there are some ideas that take some getting used to, that can even seem counter-intuitive. And often our immediate emotional reactions differ from our views after a we have had time to digest some information and to think about the topic.
Aubrey de Grey on how and why life extension
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB2LfJjAI9o
Interview
http://80000hours.org/blog/42-living-to-1000-an-interview-with-aubrey-de-grey
Life extension escape velocity concept
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020187
Book "Ending Aging"
http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Aging-Rejuvenation-Breakthroughs-Lifetime/dp/0312367074/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346107641&sr=8-1&keywords=aubrey+de+grey
This! People tend to naturally assume that life extension is extension of old age, a time of pain, loss of capacity, and dependency.
If life extension is accompanied by a return to robust health, the whole situation changes. The question then becomes, at what age, given robust good health, would you choose to die? I don't see a lot of healthy 80-year-olds contemplating suicide, unless they have become socially isolated due to the death of friends and family.
People sometimes get angry at the idea of life extension. We have, most of us, come to a difficult accommodation with the fact that we are going to get old, get sick and die. Opening up that can of worms is not a comfortable experience.
If people really believe life extension is a bad thing, they should be arguing against research into Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Heart Disease, Cancer, which mostly affect old people. But they don't. People haven't thought about living for a very long time, but you generally find people want to stay healthy and, if healthy, they don't want to die just yet.
Give me a break, it was obviously short for asking them out for a cup of coffee.
Agree.
Statements like "girls can't code / white men can't jump / men can't be empathetic / blacks are dumb / jews are greedy" are just pathetic.
> You are a fucking idiot
You seem to be proving my point about the bluntness and rudeness of people in hacker culture. If you are a woman, I note that women in hacker culture can also be blunt.
Politeness, if taken to excess, is indeed an enemy of truth. The whole concept of "the elephant in the living room" (that which we all know about but cannot discuss) demonstrates this.
> The first programmer is a womyn.
Not a single one of Ada Lovelace's programs would have worked. A person who has not written one program that works is not a programmer.
> The first high level programming language is written by a womyn.
The first production compiler was probably Fortran. The spec was written before Grace Hopper's Flow-matic prototype was written. And the production compiler was done first.
I'm not sure what this or your previous point has to do with anything. Women have made some contribution to science technology. The most impressive example, to my mind, was Noether's theorem.
Most real contributors of either sex get respect from their contributions and do not need to create drama over trivia (such as being asked do they want a cup of coffee).
>Do you walk up to men and ask for sex?
>Do you touch other men all over and give them massages?
Women have done these things to me and not at bars either. BTW I am a guy.
My responses were
a) (mostly) No I have a girlfriend. (sometimes) Yes!
b) Ignored it and stood away from her in future.
While sexual assault is bad, I think that one can be too carried away with making sure everyone speaks in such a way that no-one can possibly be offended. "Your patch is lame and I will never commit it" would offend some people but it needs to be said.
First off, it is not a good idea to take women's advice about what attracts them. In fact it is a very bad idea. Attraction largely operates below the conscious level. What you see above is the rationalization hamster at work, concocting plausible sounding explanations that actually have very little value and much disinformation.
> 1) Believe it or not, a girl can *actually* be interested in you. No, I'm not kidding! You *don't* have to be a creeper!
Now the truth comes out. Here is the definition of "a creeper": someone a woman is not attracted to. It is not the behaviour that is creepy. the same behaviour can be creepy or not, based entirely on the woman's subjective response.
> All the women are asking for is to be treated the same as you'd treat the men.
No they're not. Men in hacker culture are rude, insensitive, blunt, and do not spare other people's feelings. Truth trumps politeness every time.
What they are asking for is special treatment, while being accorded equal respect. The usual feminist double standard.
Similarly the right to wear hot outfits, act flirtatious but to get offended if someone they don't like (i.e. "a creep") responds.
We need to stop wasting time on this female love of drama.
There is a difference between asking someone for a coffee and putting your hand on their genitals without consent.
1. Data mining
> no correction has been made for inflated error rates due to performing a large number of analyses
Also, the correlations for beleif in heaven and belief in hell are both large and of the opposite sign. A classic red flag for data mining, i.e. torturing the data until you get the result you want.
2. Garbage data
If you look at the article, it claims that Russia is a far more law-abiding country than Australia.
However when you look at the one crime statistic that is very reliable, we see that Russian has 84 murders per day = 217 per million people per year. Australia has about 260 per year = 11 per million people per year. That is, Russia's murder rate is 20 times higher. Yet we are supposed to believe that Russia has a lower crime rate than Australia.
If this is at all representative of the quality of their data, it is a sad joke.
http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/advice/Russia