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Comment by araneae | Hacker News Reader

If there was ever a convincing argument that women are dumber than men, this is it.

First, you are confusing lack of intelligence with ignorance. A person can be intelligent, but ignorant of basic facts. It's not terribly common in our society, where basic education is afforded to most, but it's a distinction that needs to be made.

Second, the fact that more women got the answer wrong doesn't tell you anything about the average intelligence of each gender. What if women's intelligence distribution has a greater variance? There could be a bigger number of women (compared to men) at the extreme ends of the intelligence spectrum. I don't believe that's the case, but the "argument" you present is far from "convincing".

It's an individual fact, certainly, but it has greater implications for a person's understanding of the world. A professor I knew in college taught a non-majors general biology class, and every semester he put this question on- order according to size, the following: cell, organism, atom, molecule, organ. Apparently this was a very difficult question for them, and it expresses a fundamental lack of understanding of how things work. If they don't know that the Earth is smaller than the Sun, then how can they understand that the Earth is a satellite of the Sun?

>What if women's intelligence distribution has a greater variance?

Sure. But if anything, it has a smaller variance (if there is a difference; the "greater" male variance hypothesis is a bit under fire recently.)

If they don't know that the Earth is smaller than the Sun, then how can they understand that the Earth is a satellite of the Sun?

To be completely fair, there are stellar bodies much smaller than earth which an earth-sized planet could easily be a satellite of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_black_hole

Then again, if you know about such objects, you probably also know the earth is bigger than the sun.

Depends on how you define "bigger." If that refers to amount of mass versus volume then a stellar black hole is an extremely large object.

>Then again, if you know about such objects, you probably also know the earth is bigger than the sun.

Tongue-in-cheek?

This suggests another reason why 5-10% of people got the question wrong - they weren't paying attention and clicked/typed the wrong choice.

(Ok, I admit it - I just don't know anything about astronomy. Also, elephants are bigger than the moon, right?)

Right, but there's still a sex difference. So you're saying women lack attention to detail?

Perhaps smart women are less likely to use the site than smart men. I have heard that more men than women use dating sites, so the intelligence distributions are also probably different.

> If they don't know that the Earth is smaller than the Sun, then how can they understand that the Earth is a satellite of the Sun?

These facts are independent.

Not really. Whether or not a system is a satellite relationship is based on their comparative masses and orbits. If the Sun where the less massive we would refer to it as the satellite (well, there would be a lot more consequences, but that's one). If the objects were approximately equal we would call it a binary system with the more massive being referred to as the primary.

You just switched from volume to mass.

I did and I mentioned in a cousin comment that it's because astrological designations like "planet" and "orbit" are based on mass, not on volume.

The question is actually difficult because an organism can be an microorganism or an animal with organs, so it's impossible to say which ones bigger. Also i'd say if you don't know that the earth is bigger than the sun than you most likely don't know how gravity works, and not that the earth is a satellite of the Sun.

The question is actually difficult because an organism can be an microorganism or an animal with organs, so it's impossible to say which ones bigger.

Only if you allow for comparisons between life forms. If you assume that he's speaking of a single life form that contains all the systems then the question is well-defined.

Actually it's men with a wider curve. More mentally retarded and more geniuses are male. (FWIW)

...and that's the fastest I've ever accumulated downvotes.

Come on guys, I didn't say that women are dumber than men. I just said that this is the single most convincing piece evidence for that. Doesn't say much for the existing evidence given that this is a crappy non-scientific OKCupid blog post, now does it? Knee-jerkers.

> Come on guys, I didn't say that women are dumber than men. I just said that this is the single most convincing piece evidence for that.

You're missing the deeper implication that you're cruising around the Internet looking for, and pouncing on, such evidence. Why is it important to you whether or not women are dumber than men?

> given that this is a crappy non-scientific OKCupid blog post

In my opinion, OKCupid's OKTrends blog posts are second only to MythBusters in putting out interesting, entertaining, scientific answers to questions for which a lot of people are either completely uncertain of the answer or have terrible misconceptions.

You're missing the deeper implication that you're cruising around the Internet looking for, and pouncing on, such evidence. Why is it important to you whether or not women are dumber than men?

Perhaps he is, in fact, cruising the information looking for evidence that women are dumber than men. So what? His desire for knowledge harms no one. You imply (without evidence) that he is biased. What is the point of your comment, besides lowering his status?

The point of my comment was to reply to his comment which was questioning why he was downvoted. I downvoted neither of his comments.

>Why is it important to you whether or not women are dumber than men?

Wouldn't you want to know if you carry within you an inherent deficit or advantage? I do. That's why I got my genome sequenced. Now I know my risk of colorectal cancer. Knowledge is power. Blah blah blah.

Also it's interesting. And clearly it's not just interesting to me, but to HN as a whole. There's a sex-related post on the front page practically every time it loads.

>OKCupid's OKTrends blog posts are second only to MythBusters in putting out interesting, entertaining, scientific answers to questions

So you admit that in terms of one scientific fact that has implications for a person's understanding of size, scale, and space, women are inferior to men.

Come on guys, I didn't say that women are dumber than men. I just said that this is the single most convincing piece evidence for that.

Well, I think we need to spend a little time agreeing on the definition of "dumber." Does it mean IQ? General knowledge? Something else?

If we can agree on a test of some kind that we can apply to a single person, how do we determine whether a group of people is smarter or dumber than another group of people?

For example, let's say Test "A" is to ask a single question, whether the Sun is larger than the Earth. Let's say that 90% of group "M" gets this question right, while only 10% of group "F" gets this question right. Is group "M" smarter than group "F?" That doesn't make any sense because the group isn't an organism, it isn't smart or dumb.

And we can't extrapolate much about members of "F." What if "F" consists of 100 people, 90 of whom are illiterate and the remaining 10 are Astronomy PHds, while "M" consists of 100 high school seniors. Is "F" now smarter than "M" because ten of its members are more educated than all of the Ms?

Selection bias matters. Remember that the OkCupid sample consists of people who are dating online. The information is interesting, but might be skewed. Perhaps a lot of educated, intelligent women are in monogamous relationships and not dating?

We see this phenomenon in job hunting, where a random sample of programmers looking for a job is a terrible representation of programmers overall.

Sure, selection bias matters. I never said OKcupid was statistically valid. In fact, in my second comment I disparaged it.

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