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Comment by barbacoa | Hacker News Reader

People have done studies on other primates and found they mirror the same gender toy preferences that we see with humans.

http://www.yerkes.emory.edu/about/news/developmental_cogniti...

I don't understand why people totally discount evolutionary biology. Eons ago our ancient primates ancestors were eaten by snakes. Today we are still hard wired to fear them.

Likewise long ago women who didn't have the disposition to care for children had fewer children survive. Thus women are evolutionary tuned for the traits needed for caring of children.

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Ok but what other primates do may not translate to good public policy. For example, we've found evidence of severe bullying among chimpanzees, that does not mean that we should accept bullying in our schools.

Yesterday, there was an article about how more women than men graduate from higher education. The top voted comment was about how this was because the education system was "failing boys". It was not about how women are evolutionary tuned to be better learners than men. Maybe they are? It seem weird to me that when women are on top it's the system's fault, but when the men are on top it is natural and/or biology.

> what other primates do may not translate to good public policy.

True, but we weren't talking about whether it's good public policy, but about what the cause is. That chimpanzees exhibit bullying does not mean we should accept bullying, but it does mean we can't e.g. exclusively blame violent movies for bullying - not without strong additional evidence.

> It seem weird to me that when women are on top it's the system's fault, but when the men are on top it is natural and/or biology.

Both sides of the debate could stand to be more principled and objective, yes.

> I don't understand why people totally discount evolutionary biology.

Because nowadays the “blank slate theory“ is pretty much dogma in most social science departments.

James Damore said essentially this and was publicly excoriated and fired for it... So it's not that it's "discounted" it is literally forbidden to discuss in any way, shape or form the fact that we evolved and there might be vestigial traits left over from that that have some impact on gender dynamics.

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