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Comment by rmc | Hacker News Reader

it will take more time to have their brain evolve to levels that current men's brain is at

Wait, did you actually compare women to cave men or half monkey? Maybe that's why blacks aren't represented well in highly technical or high paying jobs, cause they only came down from the trees recently?</sarcasm>

OK I'll bite: The problem with your 'evolution theory' is that men and women aren't separate species and interbreed, a lot. Half the DNA in each women comes from a man, and half the DNA for a man comes from a woman. If "women DNA" were 'stupider' than "man DNA", then (like lots of genetic traits (e.g. skin colour, height)), you'd see it evening out over the generations. If there was a "dum dum gene" that only lived on the X or Y chromosome, you'd have to explain why it doesn't seem to affect people who don't have XX and XY (some men are XXY, some women are X, etc.)

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> Half the DNA in each women comes from a man, and half the DNA for a man comes from a woman.

See: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm

  Recent research using DNA analysis answered this question about two years ago.
  Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.

Will look for sources.

It's entirely possible for both things to be true.

In a village of 1 man and 10 women, and that man impregnates each women, resulting in 10 babies. If you look at that set of 10 babies, then each baby will have half their DNA from a man and half from a woman. However of the 10 babies, the set of male ancestors is 1 person, but the set of female ancestors will be 10.

My understanding of the summary is thus:

The variance in aptitude in men is greater than the variance in women, even though the average point for women is higher than that of men.

To put this another way (vastly simplified), there are more male geniuses and more male idiots. However if you were to grab a random woman off the street, she is likely to have greater aptitude than a random man you grab off the street.

So in US highschools where grading is bounded and the same testing is forced on everyone, we see women routinely trouncing their male counter parts in GPA scores.

Then in college, where people have a choice more men go into difficult but unprofitable majors (e.g. Physics), additionally women have a bias against certain subjects (e.g. Computer Science) due to the low-status accorded to it, and thus choose other majors like Law or Medicine.

----

Bringing it back to Genetics, that means the 'dum dum gene' (gene which causes aptitude variance) is on the Y chromosome, thus women aren't affected by it at all.

The variance in aptitude in men is greater than the variance in women

Yes there are several diseases that negatively affect intelligence that are much much more common in males (e.g. autism). However genetics (and evolution) is not fair. It's not a trade off, where if one subset of humanity (men) are more likely to have autism doesn't mean that Genetics will give that subset more genius genes "to make up". Evolution is blind, the universe is apathetic.

This "genetic disadvange in one area ergo must be genetic advantage in another" idea is only used to explain why people in a privileged position are "entitled" to their privileged position, and a deflection away from the main issue of privilege.

If the universe worked that way, then why are the IQ tests for (in the USA) lower on average for african americans? What genetic advantage do they get in return? If Asians are good at maths, what genetic disadvantages do they get to to counter act it? If Jews are better with money, what genetic disadvantages do they get in exchange? If this theory was true, it could have answers for these. If gay people are geneticly more inclined to mental health issues than straight people, what genetic advantages do they get in return?

Also if was genetics that explains how "men are smarter than women and hence that's why men earn more than women", then you'd have to explain why there has not been a lot of genetic change in the last 100 years, but women are now earning much much more than they were 100 years now. (One of the answers is because of institutional misogyny which artificially kept women earning less than their ability. Since that has reduced in scope, women are earning more. So how do you know it's not institutional misogyny now?)

I think you're taking this discussion far past the literal meaning of my words.

In fact, you're actually taking my words to have the opposite meaning of what they were.

Example:

> if was genetics that explains how "men are smarter than women and hence that's why men earn more than women

What I said:

> we see women routinely trouncing their male counter parts

Lastly, trying to boil this down into a simplistic "women are smarter than men" or "men are smarter than women" argument is a fallacy in the making.

A difference in variance and mean does not mean one population body is 'better' than the other.

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