Neuroscientist Larry Cahill on the ‘neurosexism’ debate
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Her exact words were “men and women are equal but different, in many ways they’re complimentary” she then explained that some men look down on women because they didn’t value how women think about things. She also said the same is true of some women viewing men.
Later she would say that men and women are equally shitty to each other (when I was being abused at school by girls who knew I could not physically retaliate).
I currently hold these views and neither feminism nor men’s-rights-activists seem to ascribe to those values, at best they pay lip service to the notion that we’re (on average, and grossly generalising) complimentary.
I remember a small blurb about “judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree” in reference to our education system-
Maybe it’s a old way of thinking. Maybe my mum wasn’t right at all, but I don’t understand why we can’t celebrate our differences instead of expecting women to fit in to men sized roles. Or alternatively making a “middle-ground” box which has to fit both sexes.
If anyone wants to alter my way of thinking; I’m completely open to it- I am perfectly willing to accept that I’m old fashioned or incorrect here.
I’m not that old yet but feminism to me growing up was always that men and women should have the same opportunities and treatment, but never that they were the same. Maybe I’m wrong but that’s more of a recent phenomenon which claimed for itself the title of feminism - I doubt the original feminists would agree with it, but I don’t know. (I find it sad because to me it’s turned a serious movement for which very brave women had to fight hard into a joke.)
1) men and women become more equal;
2) the remaining reasons for inequality become predominantly biological (because the social ones are reduced, while the biological ones remain).
But it is easy to make a completely opposite conclusion, such as: "if some differences are social, then all differences have to be social". And then, when trying harder does not change things anymore, it is only a proof that we need to try even harder.
My take is: don't describe things as biological unless you are damn well sure that they are. We (as a society) have been wrong too many times before.
(And similarly, this doesn't prove that everything is genetic. You can't get science by merely doing the opposite of other people's prejudices.)
The belief that nothing is genetic can also be used to oppress people. For example, you can dismiss highly intelligent people from poor families by insisting that high intelligence doesn't really exist and everything comes from universities, and then pointing out how poor people usually don't come from the best universities.
Any kind of incorrect belief can be strategically used to hurt someone.
This is still true today, to a certain extent (never is a heavy word). It's important to understand that Feminism isn't some authoritarian philosophy with a single set of ideas that you must subscribe to consider yourself a Feminist. Sure, some Feminists challenge gender essentialism in one way or another, but that doesn't mean all do or that it is a critical part of Feminism. The best way to learn is to talk to some local political groups.
What you're seeing there is an effect of the internet, not an effect of shifts in feminist movements. The internet gives everyone a place to speak which is great but the loudest/most astonishing/most disruptive voices are the ones that come out on top. Not the majority, not the thoughtful, not the ones who take action, not the voices who would like to have a conversation. If you dive past the surface I don't think you'd find modern feminism a joke and think that it has grown and matured. But I'm just one opinion
What we're looking at here is a bit more complicated; the modern situation (not just feminism but a number of different position groups) wants to downplay the existence of actual differences between the sexes. This seems partly motivated by existing, bad/biased science, and partly by the worry that if women and men are physically different, that people will use that as a basis for discrimination. I do see a bit of what appears to be science denialism amongst the "there is no male brain or female brain" crowd, which I find worrisome. Ultimately, I am with the second-wave feminists: people deserve equal opportunities regardless of their differences.
The right not to be grabbed or groped or touched without consenting, to be evaluated on ability to do the work and not on appearance, to have supervisors and coworkers focused on working together and not on how to date you.
These are all issues disproportionately impacting women, that are not requests for "equality of outcome" or that men and women are the same, and very much critical to addressing "equality of opportunity".
On the one hand we have women in Iran facing real dangers to take off their veils. Then on the other we have this strange group that deny science and demand we believe men and women are identical. I also reject this pattern where women should measure and compare themselves to men, and shape themselves into men. Which seems very anti-feminist. You're fine to do it, but to label that feminist is (I believe) wrong.
That men are raised with the social expectation to not find problem and to not let something impact them is not to say that women are impacted more by it. With reference to non-consensual encounters, there is a great deal of bias that refuses to see men as victims and even encourages them to see being the victim as a beneficial event for them.
But I would be very surprised if the overall number of men experiencing non-consensual touching was greater than the number of women.
There are also numerous self reports by bouncers in bars that point out how bad it gets and the extent of the double standard.
Or consider the case of celebrities openly admitting to such crimes of recent and the vast difference in social reaction based on the gender of the celebrity.
Interesting. I've never really got the impression that Men's Rights Activists ascribe to any specific notion like that. To me the movement seems to be about shedding light on the injustices of our legal systems where men get screwed over: divorce court, custody of a child, alimony, punishments seemingly not being equal between the sexes. I guess they also have an element of fighting against social injustices such as false claims.
I might be wrong though. I might simply be seeing only the things I care about in their movement, since I see it so rarely.
In the end it doesn't matter if either movement has bad apples. What matter is if we want a society that make abortion illegal or a legal system that base judgement on gender.
I actually like this line a lot, because it points to several of the problems in modern society. It makes you ask the question: "on what grounds is worth judged?"
And then you realize that, without a clear way of thinking about "worth" (which is something organized religions provided), we, at least in the US, fall back on "economic value", which is determined by "aptitude". So we can pretty quickly see the philosophical pit we've fallen into: if "worth" and "aptitude" are intertwined, then the statement admits women are indeed "worth less".
I want to agree with that statement. But, there's a problem: how can we come up with a method of judging worth that doesn't rely on some sort of "over-human validator" (e.g. God)? Or alternatively, how can we come up with a broadly acceptable method of judging human worth, without falling into the pitfalls of Abrahamic religious practices?
Our brains are pretty well built for this. Are you sure that requiring human-type validation is even avoidable at all?
Who's asking you to "expect" anything? I think if you assess people's abilities individually everybody's happy.
Well, James Damore got fired from Google (and, apparently, blackballed out of the employment market entirely) for insinuating that Google was assessing people's abilities individually. While I think you're correct, the problem is that too many people seem to try to evaluate whether or not everybody's abilities are being assessed individually by looking at the end result rather than looking at the individuals involved.
It doesn't look like it. A lot of people in science are demanding equality of outcomes for groups (when the outcome is positive). They are well done pass asking for equality of opportunities.
The idea of being equal in worth is interesting. How do you define it? Is it a kind of humanitarian worth? That all people are deserving of basic rights, decency and respect? Such would be the case even for handicapped or mentally challenged individuals? Or are you saying that their set of aptitudes, while not identical, sum up to an equal worth in utilitarian terms? Say, for example, taking one of the very strong stereotype, that child bearing is so useful to our societies, that it makes women as worthy as even the strongest of men and their aptitude for heavy lifting?
Now, the idea of equal aptitude is relevant as well. There's two main reasons for that. The first is that, some aptitudes, like intelligence, such as talents in mathematics, or decision making in general, has historically been thought of as inferior for women. Yet, there's never been evidence of this as far as I know. In fact, now that we admitted women in higher education, they are out outclassing men in most fields when it comes to grades. So this is a very relevant debate, because bias still exist, that a pretty young woman can't be as smart as a young man.
The other reason is the wash of the average. Lots of women are physically stronger then lots of men. Similarly, lots of men are emotionally more adept then lots of women. Thus aptitude shouldn't be characterised by gender, but it should be more individualized. This applies in some scenarios, like not giving women applicants a chance at very physical jobs. Even though some women have the necessary aptitudes.
To give a concrete example: Dame Caroline Haslett who was the President of the Women's Engineering Society in Britain created objectively the safest electrical outlet and plugging mechanism ever conceived (as long as you don't step on one). There was no such mandate for it to be so safe, you could argue that a man could have done exactly the same but I'd rather consider that she was being extremely empathetic as to how the device would be used and that safety in this area would quite literally save the lives of men, women and children.
A world without her contribution would be a lesser one, but I would argue that it was made with her femininity, not with how much she filled a man-shaped role.
Believing science is one thing, but that sounds like exactly the sort of "gendered narrative building" that feminists are trying to fight against. When they say stuff like "gender roles are fictional," a large part of it is due to people inventing stories in their heads about gender roles that aren't true. I think that it's fair to not try to add anything beyond what's demonstrably there.
Why? If peoples' experiences and psychology (in my layman's understanding of agreeableness) show that women tend to be more empathetic than men, it seems perfectly reasonable for them to suggest that that may have benefited an inventor in a fantastic discovery they made. People have no obligation to buy into others' narratives. Groups can claim whatever they want is fictional, it doesn't mean everyone else has to censor their speech accordingly.
I thought the person you were responding to was making a very thoughtful point, and one that was very respectful of women and the valuable insight some of them have that is often overlooked.
The problem is his comment can very easily be read as "Women should do what they are good at". This implies "taking care of kids and home" for many invested in this narrative. On contested topic like this, we should try to phrase our comments very clearly.
> People have no obligation to buy into others' narratives.
Our society seems to work best if we agree on fundamental "narratives". Equal opportunity being good is one of them. Actually, not really, since perfect equal opportunity would require us to not be able to help our own children more than others can help theirs. But let's not get into capitalism/class stuff but back to gender. A talking point the other side likes to make is "wanting equal outcomes". Nope, that would be stupid. But significantly unequal outcomes are a good indicator we'll find unequal opportunities when we look into it. Or some other reason. But the other side very quickly likes to accept "men and women are just different" as other reason and prefers to disregard e.g. fixing societal feedback loops via affirmative action. That finally brings me to your first part:
> If peoples' experiences and psychology (in my layman's understanding of agreeableness) show that women tend to be more empathetic than me
I don't think we have hard scientific research data showing to what degree this is based on nature or nurture. The latter would be problematic since against the spirit of equal opportunity. Of cause that question is hard to answer, since randomized controlled trials are impossible and understanding the physics and it's emergent properties is still beyond us.
Also, I am under the impression that rolling ones eyes at a choice to stay at home is a continued devaluation of women’s work. The upkeep of a living location and the caring of any little humans is a significant labor, such that upon outsourcing is often equivalent to a median yearly salary of a single person. However because there isn’t a common framework to evaluate worth beyond money in the society I live in, unpaid labor isn’t valued.
People who are driven by money, no matter gender, skin color, etc shouldn't be held back from it because of preconceptions about their ability. Only their actual ability should matter.
Or were there are other factors e.g. stimulating, flexible, empowering, creative etc.
Because pretty sure women are selecting roles for a range of different factors as well. You know because all women aren't the same. Just like all men aren't the same.
But you said it yourself: "several career paths would likely have made me happier".
What's the point in living if not to be happy? Money is just a means to avoid unhappiness. It's been proven time and time again that after a decent income money does not increase happiness.
I'm (reasonably) good at it. I don't like it much. But be slightly good and have a little experience in programming and if you're not careful pretty soon it's way better than most other options you've got, by every measure except "enjoy and am proud of what I do".
I also do not have a trust fund, actually the contrary, I grew up as poor as you can possibly be in the UK. Mother didn't work, had various vices including drinking and smoking which did not jive with our financial situation (living on benefits).
Due to that my mother put more worth into immaterial things, and that rubbed off on me I think.
Additionally; I've only been employed in a self-sustaining fashion for 8 years now. Perhaps I've lost what it feels like to be destitute- but I don't think I'd trade happiness for money because outside of not worrying about bills and food money doesn't actually buy me anything. Just a little more ease of mind.
I think there's also some pretty big cultural differences between the US and western Europe when it comes to decisions to pursue money or not.
There is evidence that women are judged by appearance and men by financial success. Even a mild effect would be more than enough to skew the outcomes; it would impact the more competitive representatives of each gender.
I think this is the most important question to solve if we want more equal outcome in worklife.
When I was young the highest paying job direct out of high school was underwater welder. Not many teenage girls are signing up for that program, nor are there much political interest to get 50/50 gender ration for jobs that work in the dark, dangerous, on rusty oil rigs far away from land.
In a bit of irony, the same can be said for professions dominated by women. Hired midwifes during the summer vacation months here in Sweden are getting salaries up to 9k a month. Very few people here in Sweden has a monthly pay that high. Demand can skyrocket when you only recruit from half the population, at which point the employer will pay what the market demands.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/04/20/the-worst-jo...
1. Taxi Driver: Uber and Lyft have significantly increased the number of women, and there are lots of efforts to get more women involved. https://www.gosafr.com/ is one example.
2. Logger: This is probably the kind of job you were thinking of. Logging is completely male dominated, but there are some small efforts at change: https://www.pressherald.com/2019/03/17/the-axe-women-loggers... and https://www.tigercat.com/between-the-branches/logger-girl/
3. Newspaper reporter: Majority male, but not overwhelmingly. Definitely a big push to equalize the field: http://www.womensmediacenter.com/reports/the-status-of-women...
4. Retail salesperson: Majority women.
5. Enlisted military personnel: Hard to summarize here, but issues around women in the US military come up quite frequently in Congress and elsewhere, and the history of increasing participation and equality is long.
6. Corrections officer: Women were 37% of adult officers and 51% of juvenile officers in 2007 (http://www.corrections.com/articles/21703-women-as-correctio...). There is a push to increase equality: https://www.correctionsone.com/women-in-corrections/
7. Disc jockey: Hard to find exact stats, but it's the same story as everywhere else in modern society. Used to be completely male dominated, now women are increasingly entering the industry and fighting against entrenched stereotypes. A random article: https://www.laweekly.com/music/women-djs-are-out-there-clubs...
8. Broadcaster: Feel like I'm starting to repeat myself. It's the same story as everywhere else in the media. Look at the Women's Media Center and other organizations for evidence of a push.
9. Advertising salesperson: Is this the kind of job you thought was on this list? Majority women, apparently: https://datausa.io/profile/soc/112011/#demographics
10. Painter: Seems to be similar to logging. I honestly don't know why. Presumably it's historically male (like everything), and it's not a particularly desirable career for anyone.
etc.
Industries like logging and painting are outliers. There are some jobs that are so physically demanding that men have a significant innate advantage, but there's no natural reason for any industry to be 95+% male.
My (also single) dad says that men are smarter and more ambitious than women, that womens' place is at home, taking care of the children and that society is broken because women are trying to do the things that men are naturally better at doing and don't want to do what they're good at.
Your mom against my dad. Who wins?
Not to mention that there seems to be considerable scientific controversy on what this "modern scientific understanding" is -and how else could it be? Science is a debate- I doubt we can settle it by listening to what our moms and dads say.
your comment:
> My (also single) dad says that men are smarter and more ambitious than women, that womens' place is at home, taking care of the children and that society is broken because women are trying to do the things that men are naturally better at doing and don't want to do what they're good at.
Men are smarter at what exactly? Mathematics?
Although the question of whether there is a gender difference in math seems like a simple one, the answer is complicated. Overall there are only small differences in boys’ and girls’ math performance; those differences depend on the age and skill level of the student, what type of math they are attempting and how big of a dissimilarity is needed to say that boys’ and girls’ math performance is truly different.
Ambitious? Again, Ambitious at what? travelling the world? starting and sustaining a family? or is it solely on what dollar amount is ascribed to an hour of your day?
A womans place is at home is about as sexist an argument I have ever heard. By that logic my "place" is running around the jungle with a spear? please don't argue such bad faith.
If I were to try to dig into what your argument actually is then I would assume you dislike my comment because it leans heavily on what my mother said.
We're I arguing in bad faith I would probably say that you're rejecting her logic so outrightly because she is a woman.
But I'm going to try to argue something else.
I'm going to ask what smart and ambitious mean mean to you.
Conversely, I don't know what your mom meant by "how women think about things".
How do women think about things? I mean- according to your mom. You report her saying and seem to agree with it. Do you know what she means?
Edit: Do I really need to make it clear I disagree with my dad? I'm a woman. Is it very likely I reported here what my dad says to argue that I'm less smart and less ambitious than a man?
I don't believe I ever argued that I understood women?
I Merely stated that on average women differ from men and that it's no less valuable- I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I believe that I know how women think.
It's genuinely impossible to know how all women think just like it's impossible to know how all _people_ think.
But you report her words here and you seem to agree with her. If you don't understand what she means, how can you agree with her? And why report her words if you don't know what she means?
I believe I clearly understood my mothers intent here, I am comfortable defending the statement, where am I ambiguous in my understanding?
I can call her if you want me to confirm but in my opinion her words were incredibly concise and clear.
Her exact words were “men and women are equal but different, in many ways they’re complimentary” she then explained that some men look down on women because they didn’t value how women think about things.
I'm dangerously close to stating common stereotypes so please take the following with good faith;
I knew a female engineer who was very good at her job (she was in networking), after having a child she discussed with her husband (also a network engineer at another company, roughly the same pay) about reducing her working hours.
He was fine with it, but he was open to also taking time off, she felt it was needed because she was the mother, purely her choice. Her manager took it graciously and put her down to 80% time.
However, one engineer resented that she was away 2-half-days a week, he ascribed values that he held to her and couldn't understand why she would want to be home with her kid instead of making more of her career.
--
a male example: I have a close personal friend who is what you would call a manly-man.
His girlfriend obviously loves him, but his girlfriends best friend is not a fan of how he's "aloof", often she considers that he is secretly plotting something or is going to cheat on her. He lacks the empathy to be "seriously deep". He might even be a psychopath; by the way she tells it anyway.
The truth is that he's just a bigger guy and he is quiet, it's different when it's just me and him but with a large group he recedes into being very quiet.
She never made much of an effort to connect with him; but she judges him based on values she has, values about being open and warm and caring and smiley.
My mother has more "anecdotes" but the way things are is that it's not statistically backed. But it's a good rule of thumb to ensure that I at least try to understand someone else's values before I judge their actions (or, non-actions).
I don’t think there is anything I can say to convey the meaning I meant then. I’m sorry that I am not understandable.
Because the differences between male and female "bodies", meaning anatomical differences like sex characteristics, are obvious and self-evident, while differences in brain structure are not and therefore require careful study.
Further, because there are well-known and deeply entrenched cultural biases that risk derailing this careful study and therefore any initial assumptions that coincide with these cultural biases must be eliminated before serious work can begin.
Finally, because any result that just so happens, completely by chance, and despite the scientists' best effort, to agree with preconceived notions about "how things are" should be considered extremely suspicious and scrutinised again, and again, and again, and again, and noone who really wants to understand the relevant subjects should feel comfortable accepting such results as settled, much less defend them as "scientific orthodoxy".
In other words, because "bias" is as much a problem in science as it is in society, and because in the science of sex differences it is doubly so.
Men and women can have an identical mean across a large number of traits but if the standard deviation is not the same then we can expect large differences at the extremes. This is in fact what we see. Boys' and girls' mathematics scores are pretty much identical at the mean but boys have a slightly higher standard deviation. Boys are thus overrepresented in the 1st and 99th percentiles of mathematical ability.
I think the other problem is that we as society only want to look up, never down. Many feminists demand that we equalize the representation of the sexes in all of the high-paying, intellectual fields (engineering, management, finance) but never in the dirtiest, most dangerous, outdoor fields (mining, logging, fishing, trash collecting) where men are similarly overrepresented.
Regardless of the accuracy - and I definitely have questions about some of the thinking that comes out of that that space - I think it's important to address the arguments people are actually making, rather than others characterizations of those arguments.
It does not necessarily disprove the hypothesis of systematic sexism, but it is an observation which requires explanation.
Update: fixed wording.
For completeness, I would add the "welfare trap" to SkyBelows list, which then pulls in a lot of women. The "bottom" here is not a very comfortable place to look, and involves a sad stories from many different directions. I think one of the ways it reflects in a gendered way is that for men at the lower margins we (i.e. "society") are more likely to say 'you are on your own, deal with it yourself' and for women more likely to say 'we know better, here is what you are going to do'.
I recognize that you are in some sense just the messenger here, but I will just point out that this response appears to use a form of equivocation. Saying that society merely treats people (of both sexes) unequally in gendered ways is not the same as saying that society favors men over women.
This kind of equivocation is what is called a Motte and Bailey[0].
> Perhaps unsatisfying, but they also tend to view it as not their principal priority to fix; which I guess is fair.
Aside from the logical error, I don't mind that they their priority isn't helping disenfranchised men. Indeed, an important requirement to effectively helping people is to keep your scope narrow.
> For completeness, I would add the "welfare trap" to SkyBelows list, which then pulls in a lot of women.
Totally fair.
> The "bottom" here is not a very comfortable place to look, and involves a sad stories from many different directions.
True.
The original statement is perhaps even more in danger of falling into this and similar logical fallacy - the existence of a subset of disenfranchised men is not evidence against society favoring men generally, while it is evidence against that being universal.
I could also be reading into your words more than is there as a result of my own prior experience.
> It can after all be perfectly consistent to hold both views (i.e. that society treats people in various gendered ways and favors men over women on average) - you just have to be careful about what you are taking as evidence for what claims.
It is possible to both perspectives at the same time, but it seems a bit like addition of epicycles to Ptolemaic cosmology: an post-hoc modification to the general theory without much deeper examination into the inconsistency.
Of course all scientific models are off in some regard, it doesn't prevent them from being useful. But it is good to be aware of the edge cases in our model, in case it turns out we need to update it.
> the existence of a subset of disenfranchised men is not evidence against society favoring men generally, while it is evidence against that being universal.
Let me pose it this way: The question isn't just why are there men who are disenfranchised. If society is systematically biased against women, then why are they disproportionately absent from the lowest tiers?
> an post-hoc modification to the general theory without much deeper examination into the inconsistency.
Allowing for this (indeed proposing it) doesn't require any mental gymnastics at all, merely an allowance for complexity. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying it doesn't even run afoul of Occam.
> if society is systematically biased against women, then why are they disproportionately absent from the lowest tiers?
It's much less clear to me that this is a good definition of "lowest tier" though, clearly some prison populations and most/all homeless are in there, but it inclusive enough? What about other populations? Sex-trade workers are disproportionately women, and most of them are very low-status, but relatively few are counted as homeless. Etc. etc. I would have to know a hell of a lot more of the poverty literature before I would be comfortable that I understood where to draw this line.
Anyway we have probably reached the depth of viable conversation in this medium, or close to it. And that on a subject that is difficult to get honest engagement with. Thank you for being reasonable the whole way through, it's rare and I appreciate it.
They are making a trade in exchange for resources. No matter how horrible one thinks that trade is, it would rank as slightly better than the people who don't even have that option.
Of course those in actual enslavement situations are in even a worse position, but you then get into the movement of slaves based on where they can be most exploited and thus gender ratio of slave.
Specifically to his point that:
> the rationale was there aren’t any differences between males and females, so you avoid the unnecessarily complicated feature of the female hormonal cycle and study the male.
In other words...the "settled" science actually excludes the explicit study of, and furtherance of our understanding of, the female brain. Which in turn leads to a lessened ability to treat and address all sorts of conditions.
So by all means decry bias...but be aware that bias can be introduced by scientists wanting to cut corners and make research faster and easier so they can publish more just as much as they can be introduced by gender superiority zealots.
That said, I have to observe that if the matter was settled the way Cahill claims it is, Nature wouldn't be publishing dithyrambs for Ripon's book, and Cahill wouldn't be publishing his own article on Quillete. It would rather be the other way. It's Quillette that's know to court controversy and Nature that's know to be as controversial as a pot of instant noodles.
The real problem here isn't the science, is the pseudo-science and the journalism. It's pretty common for people to take single studies out of context and act as if their cherry picked study is the final word. Science journalists are supposed to bridge the gap between experts and laymen, but there seems to be very few good science journalists, and there seems to be lots of hacks and conmen.
That is not my comment. My comment claims that cultural bias can influence the result of scientific studies and we must be vigilant not to let this happen.
Do you disagree?
>> Should the opposite result also be viewed this way?
Does the opposite result coincide with a commonly held preconception?
My comment says what I meant to say. What it doesn't say, I didn't mean to say on the subject. Responses to what I didn't say are none of my business and I won't bother with them any more.
The only reasonable answer is "It doesn't matter." As long as the result is reproducible, coinciding with commonly held preconceptions or not is of no relevance whatsoever. All results need to be equally validated for reproducibility.
Perhaps you didn't realize that going against cultural bias (your term in another comment) make many people uncomfortable.
Why should the result that goes against the commonly held preconception be under greater scrutiny? If any difference would exist in scrutiny, it should obviously ask more from a result that goes against the general preconception.
What you might be missing is that the current leftist consensus dominating western universities is a strong form of cultural bias.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demand...
If the burden of proof is set at the level in which a statement can be made such that there is evidence that cannot be explained by other phenomena then both of you can be correct.
(TBH I don't agree that one level of skepticism should be warranted for all things. If someone claimed P=NP my expectations are significantly higher than if someone claimed that HN commentors primarily comment in English.)
IMO the problem is that it's not 'simply' because the results are inconvenient in one way or another. That seems like a rather handwavy or dismissing cognitive understanding of what the person is saying. In their perception it is because a given conclusion has a known and studied bias- this isn't particularly simple, nor is it about inconvenience. It is that the evidence provided may have caveats that have also been studied that would skew the evidence to be explained by other factors.
This is similar to the claim about the convtroversies behind global warming or antivax, except the amount of evidence is overwhelming such that the scientific consensus of possible skew is extremely low. I don't know (and have not heavily researched) if brain architecture and gender identity and human behavior (as a trifecta) have the same amount of evidence (I was under the impression that the technology to study the brain architecture is new enough that the research hasn't been wholly settled- if this is incorrect let me know).
I wasn't using "simply" to say that explains all objections, I was saying of the objections we should be wary of ones that might be because of confirmation bias, and how that can sometimes lead to apparent lack of consensus where there is one.
That is, if you take the calls for additional scrutiny and filter them to account for confirmation bias, we should consider that outcome as well as how thorough the study was when deciding how much additional confirming reports are required to start considering the results worth mentioning. Surely, if it goes against the common knowledge of a large percentage of the population, that's reason enough to follow up in detail, but we should not shy away from the truth because it is inconvenient, whatever it may be. At to be perfectly clear, this isn't some veiled statement about topics here, it's a general statement about the utility of science and how we can use it effectively to better ourselves.
I'm not always neurotypical in my understanding so please clarify if I'm misunderstanding you: Is your position not that you believe the poster is creating an unfair framework of skepticism on how convenient evidence is?
I didn't describe "the" position, or any single position. That seems to be the crux of misinterpreting my comment.
I should have included it in the reply, but I was responding specifically to the idea, in semi-isolation, of "TBH I don't agree that one level of skepticism should be warranted for all things." and how we should be careful that we don't allow it to go to the other extreme, as (it has for some subset of people) in the example I gave.
> Is your position not that you believe the poster is creating an unfair framework of skepticism on how convenient evidence is?
My point, as it often is, since I find some themes cause me to comment over and over, is that both the extremes of a spectrum are often unappealing but in different ways, and a middle ground is often best. While applying the exact same level of scrutiny to all things isn't useful or efficient, neither is allowing political, economic and cultural narratives to the degree that we never accept results that are "inconvenient" in that they run counter to those narratives. The example given was one where it is inconvenient politically and economically to accept the results of man made climate change. Culturally, that could be results on the effects of marriage, or religion, or lack of religion.
My statement should have been interpreted as a refinement on a specific point, not necessarily supporting or refuting anything absolutely.
I chose the word inconvenient on purpose, to encompass results that are against someone's economic interest as well as those against their specific views on a topic.
It's meant as a general statement about the idea of requiring more or less evidence for specific results, and where I think we should be wary of this going awry.
You may note that I clearly steered my example away from the topic at hand to avoid getting it tied up in a topic that I think is contentious because it affects people's personal interpretation of themselves. I did so by steering it to another charged topic, but one a little less tied to an individual and one that has numerous examples of very thorough science. I'm not sure why I chose inconvenient specifically, other than it encapsulated colloquially what I was trying to express. It's been used for the same purpose previously, and famously so, in "An inconvenient truth", so perhaps that affected my choice.
I get the feeling you really want me to apply the word inconvenient towards the topic at hand and your statement in some way. Honestly, since your comment is mostly about making sure we take it carefully and really understand it, I'm not sure I have a useful way to apply it without being ham-fisted and forcing it, which I would prefer not to do. If I had to apply it towards the topic of cognitive differences between the sexes (or even the races), I would say it applies only inasmuch as if the science disagrees with (or as you state, conveniently agrees with) the popular narratives, we should still look at them closely and follow the science, but we should be careful not to let our preconceptions steer us from changing our view little by little and more evidence comes in. I seriously doubt any neurological differences amount to much in comparison to natural variation and environmental factors, but I also don't think it's fair of me to prevent future people from having a better understanding of how, in general, their neurological processes might differ from other people in positive and negative ways in multiple different aspects, and how to take advantage of or mitigate them as needed.
As an example of this, my oldest daughter has ADHD. In her junior year of high school, she's finally learning techniques to mitigate the problems this causes for her (as well as the benefits), Having an explanation and template for her behavior and how we should interpret it was invaluable to us. It's not perfect (what template could be when applied to an individual?), but it did help us all channel our frustrations into useful life strategies, as parents and for her as a child. If an area of research that yields better understanding of our minds overall hampered because of our inability as a society to accept where it conflicts with our ideas of equality (as weirdly disjointed and unevenly applied as those are), then I think we are all worse off for it.
I somewhat agree with this statement. But judging by the ink spilled over sex differences in places like the New York Times, and by the views on the subject that one is allowed to hold in the polite company of higher education and industry, and by the intensity of the backlash when one publicly deviates from those views: I suspect the "deeply entrenched biases" most significant for present-day researchers lean quite opposite from what you assume.
what burden of proof was required to come to this conclusion and why is that burden so much lower than the one required to conclude there are gender differences in human brains? Liberal universities are some of the most politically-correct, left-leaning bastions in the world. Members are imediately called to resign if they dare state anything against the progressive groupthink [1]. Yet you state as if it were well-established fact that "bias is a problem". this is not even counting the programs, scholarships, and active recruiting for more women in science.
I see 2 problems with accusations of "bias". For one, they're never levelled at an individual so the problem can be addressd at the source. It's always something nebulous, like "bias exists in science". So it's kind of like accusing all scientists of being sexist (or implicitly, male scientists, unless you want to clarify that women, too, are part of the problem), while at the same time accusing none of them. It's a tool that conditions its accused members to atone for something they didn't necessarily do, or if they did at one time, they're never forgiven. It makes everyone in the group feel guilty, regardless of whether they actually did something they should feel bad for.
The second problem with bias is that there's no bar for it "being a problem" ? In otherwords, if "it" exists in even one person somewhere in academia, one time, is it a problem ? If so, how long of a period does there have to be without bias for it to no longer be a problem ? If, say, a CMU professor makes a sexist tweet, how long is there a "sexism problem" at CMU? Forever? Until he is fired? Until he apologizes? None of these terms is defined, because I suspect it's not a problem intended to be solved. It's a social manipulation tool.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/us/yale-lecturer-resigns-...
That seems like a very odd, unscientific position to take. We know that men and women have different physical characteristics and hormonal affects (as an obvious example, women have a menstrual cycle while men do not). Ergo, the hypothalamus and pituitary gland (two areas of the brain which play pivotal roles in the human endocrine system) are structurally different between the sexes; this is obvious and self-evident.
Also, differences between males and females in animals are completely irrelevant for humans, because humans have nothing in common with animals.
Thus spoke the latest science (of 17th century, but who cares, science is still science).
The categorical denial of neurological sex differences of the sort that was published by Nature does not encourage careful study. In fact, it does rather the opposite by turning the subject into a political football. This distracts from the more important issue that arguably women have been under-served by the medical community precisely due to the denial of such differences.
They are different enough that investigators can distinguish the differences in skeletal remains, so I'm not sure that holds.
That careful study has been done. The science is settled, and there to learn for anyone with an open mind.
Stopping people from doing science just because of political ideology, is a very dangerous proposition.
Bias is a terrible default as it require the other camp to prove a negative.
Ideas that the article does not propose include:
- Men are better than Women or vice versa.
- Men are better suited to X activity or job.
The point was that the science should be evidence lead and defended from ideologues regardless of your view on the broader political issues. Ideologues attempt to bend all evidence to support a pre-existing conclusion, and the politicisation of science is bad in all cases because it undermines the entire process. It's depressing that a publication such as Nature should be affected in this way.
The best non controversial example is height. As we all know, men are on average taller than women. As we also know, that doesn't mean every man is taller than every woman. If you're a man, there is almost certainly a taller woman out there, if you're a woman, there is surely a shorter man.
So if there is a job where height is an advantage, there are two stupid ways to approach this. (A) Since men are taller, only men should be allowed to do the job, (B) Since any gender can have any height, gender distribution in this job must be 50/50.
I claim the right answer is (C), let everyone who is qualified (by height) do the job, and don't be surprised or offended when there is a 80/20 distribution in that work force.
'Blank slate theory' simply isn't what feminists are arguing; they are arguing that our society has a woefully poor record of hastily ascribing traits to a kind of biological determinism, and further claims of that type should be heavily scrutinised.
The physical differences exist today and are exhibited based on biological genders. That does not preclude that these differences are unduly influenced by environmental issues (including socialization). However denying that they exist (which is what Cahill is objecting to here) on the basis that the cause might be environmental and not "innate" just means that the ability to understand and treat neurological disorders in females decreases.
The reality is that there are differences. The cause of that reality can be complicated and nuanced and not inescapable. but as the change in societal standards is quite slow all that's happening is a disservice to an entire half of the population.
They're denying science for ideological ends. It's pretty much the same thing as conservatives with climate change. They don't like what science has to say, so they're trying to shut it down.
I'm generally pro-feminism, but no 'side' has a monopoly on bad opinions.
The money quote. The situation in neuroscience is pretty much the same as if in Machine Learning people would say ”You must use just white males in face recognition training”.
Just one example. This issue in ML has been on the surface for few years now.
> And, as The Atlantic story points out, other groups have found in the past that facial recognition algorithms developed in Asia were more likely to accurately identify Asian people than white people; while algorithms developed in parts of Europe and the US were able to identify white faces better.
Maybe Wakanda can share their facial recognition tech and we can combine them all into a fair model? (Joking about the first part, obviously, and about the second part, e.g. Aboriginal Australians, Maori, etc that don't neatly fit into those three categories.)
It is because there are inequalities naturally, either innate or acquired, that it is necessary to state equality as a goal.
This is the old is/ought dichotomy.
No, to any sane, empathic, person, the meaning of equality is clear: you want similar outcomes for everybody. It sounds complicated only to the people who think that a flat tax is the only fair tax. Let's not indulge to their (often voluntarily) obtuseness. In 20 years, they will pretend that equity means something else and we will have to come up with another word to express the same old concept.
You know, it took me a while to understand how well balanced the french motto was: liberty, equality, fraternity. If you lack one of these, you will corrupt the two others. If you think about equality while also keeping fraternity in mind (as in, "what would I want for my loved ones?"), then it becomes obvious that we are not talking about crap like "equality of chances" but true equality.
This is not obvious to “any sane empathic person” in fact it seems quite controversial and would seem to involve a terrifying level of government control in each and everyone’s lives and livelihood.
"the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic."
Hence the reason who no one makes one single idea the only absolute moral goal of a society.
I have yet to find someone who argues that therefore, we should consider freedom a dangerous ideal.
From semantics to gulag in 2 messages.
One must really hate the idea of a fair society when one equates equality with the crippling of society.
Those who are diligent and hardworking have everything they want,
Those who are lazy and absent from work have it all the same.Before imagining some dystopia where government impose the same lunch menu to everybody, start by imagining a government that would fund healthcare enough so that life expectancy could be unrelated to parents' income. That would be a fucking good start.
However it seems unreasonable for example to seek equal outcomes between person A who spends their time studying (deferring gratification) and person B who spends their time in leisure activities. Or person A who saves for retirement and person B who spends all the money.
This is not from a moral perspective, but just in terms of how we wish to incentivise behaviour.
When in doubt, just wonder how to balance liberty, equality, fraternity. Do you want to reward kids who study well? I bet. Do you want adults dying on the street for their choices when they were 10 year old? Maybe not.
And this is exactly a moral perspective: you are deciding who deserves what. You may argue that from a practical perspective we can't give equal outcomes to everybody, and I agree with that. Which is why my first message emphasizes the fact that this is a goal, an objective to strive toward.
Inequalities and the desire to get more are what fuels our society today, so as long as we have the current organization, we will have some amount of that. The moral choices of making equality a worthwhile goal says that we still want to minimize inequalities as much as possible.
I'm completely in favour of efforts and systems that seek to overcome said unfairness/injustice/corruption.
At the same time, in a well-functioning economy, higher levels of responsibility, expectation and pressure will accrue to those with higher levels of capability in any given domain. E.g., the more capable and experienced the surgeon, the more difficult and risky the surgical operations that will be assigned to them.
With that increased level of responsibility, expectation and pressure, will come greater benefits - whether financial remuneration, social/political status/influence, resources to manage/invest/allocate, etc. Though that also carries with it even more responsibility, expectation and pressure.
Of course, plenty of people are content to live a modest life, with neither high levels of responsibility, expectation and pressure, nor high levels of financial remuneration, social/political status/influence etc.
That's a perfectly reasonable trade-off.
I'm interested in your take on how the reality should be any different to this.
That is, what's your suggestion for how an economy can function well, in which everyone ends up with the same level of remuneration, status and influence, whilst making vastly different contributions to society and living with vastly different levels of responsibility, expectation and pressure?
You should differentiate politics from society to understand what I mean, I'm sorry but you misunderstood my previous comment.
Have you read Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron? Wanting similar outcomes for everybody is pretty much the diametric opposite of sane. It fails to acknowledge the statistical spread of abilities even within a protected category, let alone any that might exist between them.
That's not even an exaggeration of the position you are attacking, that's a wilful misrepresentation.
Equality from Merriam-Webster dictionary: the quality or state of being equal; the quality or state of having the same rights, social status, etc.
French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: Article I – Men are born and remain free and equal in rights (highlight mine). Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.
BTW - I come from a country with a communist history and the result of enforcing equality of outcome is indeed equality as you understand it i.e. almost everyone was equally poor. Some people actually feel genuinely sentimental about it. For example, a bubble gum or coca cola bought from capitalist shop with hard to come by dollars had to feel special. My mother often tells my a story how she enjoyed coca cola when visiting West. In general, my parents were really appreciating being able to eat oranges or bananas basically once a year for Christmas. Now, in capitalism it's an everyday thing and doesn't feel special anymore.
If two things are different, and they are a large number of functions. Chances are that they will be functions where thing A is better than thing B, and many where thing B is better than A.
... does not propose [that] men are better suited to X activity or job.
If two things are different (any things not just brains), surely there will be some cases when one works better than another?
So ignoring all of those factors and just focusing on gender is illogical. Especially given that men/women are not all uniform and exhibit wildly different personality and behavioural traits.
https://quillette.com/2019/03/29/denying-the-neuroscience-of...
This right here is one of the concrete reasons for why we NEED to recognize neurological sex differences, and have studies that focus specifically on genders. We could discover loads about treatment differences by gender, and really help a lot of people who are suffering from depression (something that is becoming more prevalent by the day).
Some context is needed though. The estrous cycle of dams is fairly complicated[1]. Controlling variables in hormones, hydration, etc. is much easier in bucks. Since the experiments are easier to control for, you need less rodents and therefore you need less funding for rodent care and housing, and you need to sacrifice less rodents to do the experiment (generally). Hence why they have been the 'preferred' rodent sex historically, among many other reasons.
Additionally, rodents are some of the 'first' level in vivo models, but are far from the last in the long line of research that is human applicable. It is very common that research done in rodents will not translate to other mainstay research vertebrates like dogs and monkeys, let alone into humans. The differences in the sexes are vastly outweighed by the differences in species.
Generally, yes, it is good that we are now defaulting to having to use both sexes of rodents. However, costs and sacrifices per experiment have risen as a result. All things have trade-offs in our world.
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=mcgill+pain+mice+research+ma...
[1] https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php/Estr...
"Q: Is there a battle between actual scientists and science journalists who may be in thrall to a progressive or woke ideology?
A: No, because most scientists are blissfully unaware..."
As long as scientists stay away from these discussions, the field will be left to "ideologues" as Cahill calls them, i.e. people who either have little knowledge of the subject they're discussing or else have such a strong agenda that it strongly biases their views and prior probabilities.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/opinion/male-female-brain... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x
Of course, so can Cahill. But is there similar evidence that he cherry-picks studies to arrive at predetermined conclusions (not a rhetorical question; genuinely curious)?
He also claims that these "ideologues" have such a strong grip on academia that they will destroy your career if you oppose them: "Senior colleagues warned me as an untenured professor around the year 2000 that studying sex differences would be career suicide." It is smearing, which he offers no evidence for, hoping that the readership will already "know" it is true. Maybe he is right, maybe he is not, I can't tell. If he is right then I hope more neuroscientists speak up about the bullying and that journals like PNAS stops publishing junk science.
Indeed, one of the other studies that he cites in support of his claims used that same data to deconstruct the model. And it really does seem to be as blatantly fudged as he claims:
"Via simulations, we systematically varied sample characteristics such as the magnitude of sex differences and correlations among variables. Some of the simulated scenarios were intentionally unrealistic, involving uniformly strong sexual dimorphism and/or extremely high correlations between variables (up to r = 0.90). Despite this, the proportion of “internally consistent” profiles remained low in all conditions. ... To further reinforce this point, we applied Joel et al.’s methods to facial morphology features in three species of monkeys (crab-eating macaques, grivets, and tufted capuchins). Our goal was to see what percent of individual monkeys would display internally consistent species-typical profiles of features. Across comparisons, only 1.1–5.1% of the monkeys showed consistent “species-typical” profiles ..."
So it's probably for the best if most scientists ignore Twitter. The occasional article like this one should help, though, if widely reshared.
IMO, the problem arises in the subjectivity of psycho-metrics, which can be very lackluster tools. IQ, cognitive function, working memory, long term memory, and on and on -much harder to establish a clear difference between these across the two sexes, given with such imprecise and arbitrary measures.
(Unless you believe that Sweden is just as patriarchal as Saudi Arabia, in which case I guess there is no argument that could possibly convince you.)
Another possible approach is to examine what happens to transgender people after they start taking hormones.
Q1. What purpose does a Gender Studies Department serve.
Q2. Why are its teachings based not on science, but apparently on the opposite?
2) It's not based on the opposite. It's based on a superset of factors of which science is just one. We don't interact with other people according to purely scientific algorithms and so dealing with the emotional, political and philosophical aspects are equally as important as the scientific.
If the scientific process does not apply to Gender Studies, that's fine I suppose, it can be considered part of the arts. However, it would be an error to then consider forming policy based on it - similar to forming policy based on music or painting.
In order for us to make policy decisions or recommendations, there needs to be academic rigor, otherwise we may as well be a theocracy.
I know you didn't directly bring up anything about forming policy, so those points aren't necessarily directed at you. I bring them up because I see a lot of material from the field of Gender Studies being used to form policy, law and social expectations.
https://www.aaas.org/programs/dialogue-science-ethics-and-re...
https://adhd-institute.com/burden-of-adhd/epidemiology/gende...
Meanwhile the kindergarten he'll attend has cut recess to once per day, something like 20-25min, and if they do indoor "recess" due to weather they often just watch a movie. Even if he cools off some by the time he goes, he's gonna need like 4x that much running around outside or in a gym per day, minimum, to not end up medicated or constantly in trouble.
"Rippon does not mention Udry’s work, or its essential replication by Udry’s harshest critic, a leading sociologist who has described herself as a “feminist” who now “wrestles” with testosterone."
But the person in question had this to say:
"This totally misrepresents my re-analysis of Udry data. (I’m the feminist who wrestles with testosterone). Might misrepresent much else as well?"
Sex can influence health & disease in many ways, which is why NIH requires that researchers consider sex as a biological variable (SABV) in all stages of research: http://bit.ly/2KXGL7k
That made me chuckle.
Rather, they are observing that the notion of one sex being biologically "superior" (or at least more suitable for high-prestige roles) has a long and oppressive history in our society, and that incautious "research" can be used to bolster types of sexism that we had hoped were behind us. Indeed, we see this happening on this very site all the time, whenever the topic comes up.
It's not that sex differences might not exist. It's that the instant you publish anything on the the topic, conservatives will inevitably and immediately latch onto it as proof that the traditional gender roles have been correct all along. Even if that's not what the studies show (and there's actually no reason to think they would, as the article points out.)
Basically, the point of feminists is that society is so fraught on this issue, and there's so much latent bias, that it is extremely difficult to perform research objectively, let alone have it be received objectively and proportionately by an audience outside the field.
modern neuroscientists have identified no decisive, category-defining differences between the brains of men and women.
1. Articles have been published which claim to identify male-female brain differences.
2. Citing a few specific examples and claiming that the book delves into more, these articles are typically wrong due to innumeracy, bad designs, lack of power, etc. I assume good faith that the criticisms she identifies of the studies in particular are reasonable, mainly because the kind of innumeracy and power issues she identifies plagues all the research I read in other fields and I have no reason to believe quant training or publishing incentives differ materially in neuroscience.
3. Without saying the articles are sexist, the conclusions drawn from the articles have demonstrably been sexist in the past (i.e. moving from claimed differences in grey matter to generalizations about women's aptitude in mathematics)
4. Because we're fairly good at no longer saying women are worse than men biologically, we now say women are different than men biologically. The studies that report this have, according to the reviewer's summary of the book, similar problems.
5. If we assume that the research on biology is incorrect, how do we square that with apparent differences between men and women? Cultural arguments, for which studies are cited.
Again, it is quite possible I am missing the anti-science backdrop of this debate that you seem to be familiar with, but the article you linked does not exhibit those kinds of qualities. It is of typical quality for a review article. The claims made that are heterodox to "mainstream" thinking appear to be grounded in criticisms of science from within science. When I say "much of social psychology is wrong", it's not because I'm an anti-science Freudian or whatever, it's because I'm a scientist and I'm numerate and I know much of social psychology is wrong due to analysis errors, researcher degrees of freedom, fraud, file drawer problems, publication bias, etc. I mean, probably the most direct claim examined in the review article is the reviewer claiming a relevant study found one thing and a subsequent, better-powered meta-analysis found the opposite thing. This is not an anti-science howl, it's literally what we want scientists to do.
Do you think you could do a better job of highlighting the ways in which you feel the article reflects a "flat earth movement"? Again, I'm at a disadvantage here because I haven't read the book being reviewed, but since you have, evidence from the book would be useful too.
I mention this because the Medium article we're all replying to seems to provide... uh... exactly zero references to studies, numeracy, good scientific practice, etc. It seems mostly founded on incredulity that anyone would make the claim you pull-quoted -- actually, even worse, it seems mostly incredulous about the TITLE of the Nature piece. It talks about Gender Studies, and culture war; it repeatedly mentions Quilette but I don't see the mention of any scientific journal after the Nature review piece. He does cite his own experience from all the studying he did.
One of the claims about Gender Studies is that methodologically it, like many cultural studies programs, elevates lived experiences over empiricism. If you're an empiricism, this is scary. But the Medium article has the professor claiming that he knows differences are obvious because he's seen them himself, and so the article which actually discusses empirical results must be wrong...
https://quillette.com/2019/03/29/denying-the-neuroscience-of...
> Basically, the point of feminists is that society is so fraught on this issue, and there's so much latent bias, that it is extremely difficult to perform research objectively
What does this even mean? Do you think the subject of this article is just unavoidably biased and thus should stop researching? Should people in very obviously left- or right-leaning fields just pack up and quit doing anything? Bye-bye gender studies, I guess?
> let alone have it be received objectively and proportionately by an audience outside the field.
So because some people will twist research for their own ends, we're just what, better off not knowing?
I would say at a minimum we need to proceed carefully, fully understanding the implications and the way results are going to be co-opted.
I think it's outright laughable that a "sex difference in the hippocampal synapse" is going to lead to undermine the basic civil rights we've established.
And if you're so afraid of silly talking-heads alleging something that you hold your science back by decades then I think you're actually giving more power to those talking heads.
Finally, denying the objectively true as opposed to saying "Sex differences exist but we don't like to talk about them" makes you the dishonest side and pushes people like me to the other side.
He is misrepresenting the Feminist's position just as much as he is claiming that they are misrepresenting science. Feminism has become the right's new Bogeyman.
It is blatantly obvious what he means by "ideologues".
Saying conservatives support sexist gender roles is like saying liberals support anti-vaxxers - wrong.