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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr; Girls work harder than boys and are more diligent about getting things done. Awesome for them. What's the problem?

The article does raise one real issue - grades in school are based on more on obeying arbitrary rules than on actual mastery of the knowledge. That's a problem worth fixing. But it's a problem worth fixing because grades are measuring the wrong thing, and it's worth fixing regardless of it's affects on statistical gender disparities.

But I guess "modern grading systems measure the wrong thing" is far less of a clickbait topic.

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To try to be fair, life is often more about obeying arbitrary rules than mastering certain subjects. Many of the things named in the article are important life skills that should be taught and encouraged.

Yes, I agree. "Self-restraint" in particular was emphasized in the article, and it's one I (a male) feel that I lack compared to female peers. So in my anecdata, sample size 1, it seemingly adds up.

My question would be: "why do females have a head-start in self-restraint, and why do males fail to catch up quickly?"

I suspect much of the answer could be cultural.

> I suspect much of the answer could be cultural.

I suspect much of the answer could be genetic. Males in primate species tend to be more aggressive and have less "self-restraint".

Fair point. Food for thought. :)

So when the parent here says males genetically have less self-restraint, that's a fair point, but when https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8338135 says women are genetically subservient, your response is "Wow, you're off the rails"

I'm not saying I agree that women have a ~subservient nature~, just that the way comments ended up being laid out really struck me.

You're right: I could see how I could come across as inconsistent. :-)

I'm certainly willing to reconsider my views, and even conceded the possible incorrectness of my beliefs in my other post which you linked.

But, I think there's a big difference in both meaning and tone between "self-restraint" and "subservience", which is (part of) why I had objected to the other post.

I had a huge problem with how the point was presented: use of a derogatory adjective, opinions as fact ("school sucks" coupled with "they like it"), "blow [my] brains out", etc. Came across as angry injust blame, to me, which is why I said it was "off the rails". It's not reasonable or fair to predicate an argument on an exaggerated and probably sexist set of statements.

Whereas contrasting aggressiveness against self-restraint (with very vague sources cited, at least) and leaving room for uncertainty as in GP at least leaves room to consider respective advantages and disadvantages of both aspects, instead of painting a "female" aspect with an entirely negative light, as in your link's parent.

This guy said it better than I did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8338243

Becoming an acceptably rewarded cubicle drone requires obeying a lot of arbitrary rules for many years. I wouldn't say life is about that.

School sucks and boys feel that more acutely, is the long and short of it in my view. Girls tend to tolerate or even like it because subservience is more in their nature. Women also tend to like moderate status corporate drone jobs that make a lot of men want to blow their brains out.

> [women] like it because subservience is more in their nature

Wow, I agreed with the first half of what you said, but you really started going off the rails here.

1 No citations given.

2 "Subservience" is unlikely to be a genetic trait, which would mean you're engaging in negative reinforcement of a culturally-imposed patriarchal "value" for women to hold.

Even if subservience is a genetic trait, it's hardly reasonable to accuse someone of possessing it.

Dude,

Subservience is forced, has been forced, due to biology, until the very recent past. Women could not even control having children until birth control. No one likes "corporate drone" jobs. No one likes being a servant or a slave either. Sometimes you take what you can get at the time just to survive.

But this doesn't answer the question why now, in this day and age, girls are (in average) more subservient than boys (EDIT: according to this article) (obviously, they don't need to be in order to survive).

That's true, and I want to extend that by saying that at the highest levels life is more about relationships and who can do favors for you. Even Y Combinator is an example of this. I'm sure everyone who gets in is fully capable, but there are probably just as many capable people who don't get in. Those who got in will probably go on to do bigger things simply by having the Y Combinator brand and network. I often ask my friends at business school whether they feel it's worth it. Invariably they mention how the things they learn aren't that useful, but that the relationships they make (plus the signal of HBS or Wharton or wherever) are well worth the price of admission.

The downside of all this is that it promotes disparate outcomes for those who come from privileged backgrounds and those who come from more ordinary ones. I'm currently attending an "elite" college and there seems to be a pretty clear distinction between job placement and family status.

We should have in mind that this transcends into how society will work in a few years, probably something that we're already seeing; becoming more of a bureaucratic society guided by politics than innovation, pragmatism and merit.

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