The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap
news.nationalgeographic.com
news.nationalgeographic.com
Some may call this naive, but this is the reason we need more unity in the world. Less division. More us...less us and them. The media seems to do a great job of pitting one side against the other. I think many of our attitudes and perspectives are learned and perpetuated by the media.
Then you have learned nothing. The tribalism in humans is hardwired. It's not going away, whatever we may wish or do. The media doesn't create the divisions, they just profit from them.
The key to peaceful coexistence is properly delineated regions and nations, so that each thede can have their land without being afraid of being invaded and replaced.
1) It's also political differences in the same nation. Tribes fragment to smaller tribes, small tribes merge to large tribes etc.
2) There are divisions based on topics of interest, subcultures, etc. that aren't location-based, but thanks to telecommunications, global.
When boundaries can change slowly enough we don't even notice. That's organic growth, that's ok.
> that aren't location-based, but thanks to telecommunications, global.
Thankfully I only have to close the browser tab to forget about someone Who is Wrong On The Internet. But I can't do that in meatspace.
Is this region responsible for the opening episode of rage? We have no idea; it is pure speculation to assume it is. All of the subsequent examples (crime, heroism) are imputed to this circuit similarly without evidence.
Then we are given a model (LIFEMORTS), which is extended to cover race relations and much else. We are told our thinking is 'tribal'; we are expected to believe this is science, because recall the existence of the hypothalamus attack region! But there is no evidence chaining these three together (neurons, the model, the behavior) - we have zero reason to accept the model view of what happened in Baltimore. It is pure speculation.
Something about all these people make them terrible humans, but it's not an adrenaline response. He's belittling all the social problems in his book by attributing them to neurological reflexes.
That said, I do agree, the story as told here is still a bit black and white for my taste. For me it was the heroism angle that threw me... E.g., maybe the majority of decorated vets are men because, until recently, only men were eligible for combat roles.
> Gentlemen
The first paragraph goes on to talk about supporting widows and children. Thankfully the paragraph does end with, "Grants of sums of money may also be made to heroes or heroines as the Commission thinks advisable-each case to be judged on its merits."
But by the third paragraph, it's back to "A medal shall be given to the hero, or widow, or next of kin ..."
I'm sure that language doesn't bias anyone on the Commission.
Is it presumed that women are unlikely to reoffend where men are assumed to be likely to?
It's like how it's difficult to get female abusers prosecuted for just about anything, including rape or spousal abuse. There's some kind of bias here.
Nope
He's just saying "speak for yourself."
Or did you mean something else?
What is wrong with this guy? Doesn't he know that gender is a social construct?
I think the author meant sex, not gender, and GP meant gender, not sex.
It's easy to conflate the two in conversation, but keeping a semantic barrier between them will help maintain civil discourse without the risk of devolving the discussion into a flame war.
Affected by? Yes.
The same thing? No.
> That's why I dislike that many attack gender roles and other social gender norms indiscriminately.
Huh. That sounds like something I'd expect to read about firsthand on Tumblr moreso than something that reasonable people would do.
> At the same time there shouldn't be any room for attacking those who don't follow the norms either. And of course some norms are just harmful. It's not so easy to just throw them all out.
I think that's fair.
Take for example the correlation between feminine behavior and two X chromosomes (XX). There is high correlation between these two factors. Additionally examine the correlation between masculine behavior and XY. Again another high correlation implying the possibility of a causal connection between gender and genes.
Though correlation doesn't imply causation it lends more credibility to the hypothesis. What if we were to raise a child, born a boy, as a girl? If gender were truly a social construct there would be no issue.
I must admit my knowledge of the scientific literature around the relationship between biological sex and gender identity is limited. Have they found a genetic/epigenetic/hormonal marker that correlates with 95%+ of transgendered people yet?
They have not found a definitive biological causal mechanism that causes transgendered traits. They have found correlations between certain biological mechanisms and transgendered traits. However these findings lead to only about a 70% correlation at most.
Please note that the 70% correlation cannot be ignored. It indicates high likelihood of a causal connection. It is unwise to dismiss this correlation even if it is below a 95% criteria. My intuition tells me that 70% is only a statistic for a single causative biological agent out of several. Once all biological markers are discovered and correlated together, I believe that the number will be 99%.
Please also note that the correlation between the XX chromosomes and the female gender is above 95%, same with the XY chromosomes and the male gender. These correlations meet your criteria. There is no scientific study that proves this but you will note through common sense that males and females tend to act within their gender role over 95% of the time.
Then I propose such a scientific study be performed.
I don't like appeals to "common sense" in political matters (and unfortunately gender and sexuality is very political right now). Because, hey, if you're wrong, wouldn't that be an interesting result?
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-22/americ...
All things must often appeal to common sense regardless of the politics behind the issue. Males have penises and females don't, does a scientific study need to be conducted to prove this point? No. Because if we needed a scientific study for every possible issue without regard to common sense we would make zero progress on any topic.
What you've described is what I refer to as "sex" while totally ignoring the topic of gender. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction
I'm not sure what your politics are, but a lot of people who have traveled down this path in a conversation ended up expressing very intolerant opinions towards transgendered people. If you do feel contempt for someone whose gender identity and/or assumed gender role doesn't match their biological sex, please don't share that opinion with me.
And I was enlightened.
The Atoal is believed to be ~30,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower And spears are ~400,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amentum is rather hard to date, but it's simpler than an Atoal.
Also, a preference for guns may or may not be there. But, males having more accurate spatial reasoning due to ranged weapons, or hunting, and or fighting seems likely. The obvious alternatives are men developed better spatial reasoning due to very widespread cultural factors seems suspicious. Or women scarified spacial reasoning for some competing features.
Anyway, the important thing is not to debate this stuff it's to actually test it. Until then it's all just hot air.
As for testing, that would be great. But it turns out that proving anything about human evolution is very hard, because most of the evidence is lost.
As to testing, I suspect we are going to get good at decoding and editing human DNA fairly soon which is going to have a lot to say about these debates. This stuff is either there or not, when and how it showed up (or not) is a separate issue.
EX: Domestic cattle are also around 500 generations old and lactose tolerance has been spreading. http://www.foodbeast.com/news/map-of-milk-consumption-lactos... lactose tolerance: 96% in Sweden, 10% in China.
I don't think new data will help. We know the changes in the human lineage; even if we knew their functional meaning, we cannot conclude whether they are adaptive or not; fixed alleles reveal little about their fixation time, etc.
It could also be due to males having larger brains.
IMO, the point is there are reasonable priors to actually start testing.
Some of these tests may be fairly simple. Do male baby's throw more things than female baby's?
> "You find that people cooperate, you say, ‘Yeah, that contributes to their genes' perpetuating.’ You find that they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that’s obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else's. In fact, just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it."
Cordelia Fine also does a great breakdown of all of these "monkey does this, therefore women shopping men guns" arguments.
The nurture side of the debate has its "no nature" clowns, but the caricature by the top-level post is completely uncalled for in this context.
You can say men are associated with blue for purely cultural reasons, because _
A: It's a 'just so' story which we can make about anything.
B: very recently they where associated with red and pink was considered a less intense version of red.
The B is an actual reasonable argument, where A has zero predictive power.
Regular people are dismissed.
Only the faceless, invisible authority is respected.
Barring certain extreme cases, of course, such as mental illness and such.
The stereotypical US things, like no universal health care, no tuition-free education, lax gun laws, mass incarceration, death penalty etc. are also a manifestation of this attitude.
You must take care of yourself, you must protect yourself, if you make it then great! If you become a criminal, you become subhuman and can be executed and treated brutally by the police. If you become dirt poor, that's your fault, you can become homeless, there's no welfare.
Now again, I'm exaggerating somewhat to emphasize what I mean. And yes I also know the historical origins of this mentality, and as I said, there are also positive consequences, like most major innovations and scientific discoveries coming from the US, the huge dynamic market where anyone can start a new company with manageable levels of bureaucracy (compared to most European countries) etc.
There's no arguing with nature, it's the ultimate citation.
But nurture means that you, or somebody involved, had a choice. So the buck stops at, rather than the faceless divinity of nature, a mere human. And those are much easier to dismiss.
So we paint the opposing argument as arising from nurture rather than nature. And those arguments stick around and get cited. And a "it's all nurture" model develops.
For instance, I learned that in every society where it was tested, men are more violent than women. But interestingly, the society itself was important as well; for instance, American society is overall more violent than Icelandic culture, and accordingly American women commit more violent crimes than Icelandic men. So there are differences in between the sexes, but the culture is a very important input if we look at how extreme the trait is.
Maybe there's also a genetic connection? ;)
Just joking.
I think overall happiness of people is also really important. The more unhappy people are the more violent they get.
People in Skandinavia are generally quite happy folks: Easy access to education, internet, food, health care, low poverty etc...
The hostility is to the tendency to attribute differences between men and women to sheer biology without a careful consideration of other factors.
Look at children: male brains develop differently to female brains. Their blood contains different chemicals. There are differences and those differences have effects.
The author is clearly writing about something that makes up one aspect of a person's gender: biological sex.
So, the author isn't being as specific/clear as you like, but you're doing disservice to your cause with comments like "What is wrong with this guy?"
How it is so many people don't grasp this is beyond me.
There's no reason to assume that the author has any ill will toward the LGBT community. It's a misunderstanding that people are (with good reason) very passionate about, but something that the author probably hasn't given much thought to.
Also, most languages have no such distinction. For example in my native language Hungarian we either use the English word "gender" or say (the equivalent of) "social sex" and "biological sex".
It's a niche thing. I understand that some people feel sensitive about sex/gender or the differences between transsexual/transgender/transvestite/queer/crossdresser/drag-queen etc. But for the vast majority of the people this just isn't a topic of interest.
When you include the full spectrum of LGBTQI you probably have to cut that down to no more than 95%, possibly less.
When you say "for the vast majority" you presume they operate in isolation, but they don't. Most people will end up knowing at least one person that doesn't conform to the traditional gender patterns, which means it's a problem everyone faces.
So that's the explanation why most people don't "get" or even think about the distinction, but they know about gays and lesbians.
Treating sex and gender separately makes it seem like they just accidentally coincide in case of 99.x% of the people.
One needs a very special kind of schooling and/or social circle to even imagine there's a difference. It seems to be very limited to (some) Americans.
Some people suffer from phantom limb syndrome. The pain is real, but the limb is not. We've not yet reached a point where the politically correct thing to do is to pretend otherwise.
There would only be PC pressure to pretend a trans man has a penis if "having a penis" were a vital component of being a man, which it is not. In any case, the circumstances under which one finds themselves having to confirm the presence/character of another persons genitals usually either fall outside of or supersede the jurisdiction of "political correctness".
This gender =/= sex is a recent concept invented by mankind.
I thought it was fairly recent concept too until I learned this tidbit in a Anthropology survey course:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender#Indigenous_cultur...
Below is a true story of a man raised as a woman, but unable to complete the sexual transition despite cultural upbringing, injections of testosterone and even testicular castration.
There is evidence in the form of the existence of transgender people. Some societies (as noted above) have been aware of the lack of an intrinsic link between apparent reproductive sex at birth and mental/social gender for quite a while, and analogous behavior is observed in some animals.
Just as you can't conversion therapy someone out of being transgender, David Reimer is evidence that you can't conversion therapy someone into being transgender.
Just because someone is born male, and raised as a boy, doesn't mean they'll agree once they can decide for themselves. They probably will, >99% of the time, but not always.
The link I describe isn't a link that ALWAYS holds. The link, like all links in science, is just a causal correlation.
So in short, being of the male sex doesn't guarantee that you will be of male gender, but it makes it highly highly like you will be of the male gender. That is the intrinsic connection and link I describe.
I think essentially we're in agreement.
For example, this article [1] shows that from 2003 to 2013, women in Chinese prisons increased by 46 percent. In that same period, women in American prisons increased by 15 percent. This is evidence that gender/sex does not impart a natural, fixed amount of criminality. Criminality varies in time and in response to stimulus.
[1] http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/women-07032015105910.h...
HAHA SNARKY COMMENTS!
Gender (both ascribed gender and gender identity, though the two are distinct but related) is social but references, in different ways, biological sex; biological sex is phenotype, and as such a mixture of genetic and environmental (but not at all social, except to the extent that the elements of phenotype that are defined to be "sex" are, like all definitions, a social construct.)