302 karma · joined April 25, 2017
Also, it seems dangerous to suggest rejecting studying a specific area because the scientific tools and our understanding around it are currently limited - this is what science is for after all. If we thought this way, we wouldn't have nutrition research.
Makes sense to me actually: I wouldn't say it's even necessarily conscious, but the less you interact with others, the more you can become set in your own ways and create pathways to seeing your beliefs as truths.
No, you can't infer this conclusion from that paper.
Yes, the paper claims that there exists some bias towards girls (from teachers' grading). And the sentence you quote claims that without that specific bias, the gender gap would be in favor of boys ("12.5% larger"). However, we do not know if this figure is free of bias (IMO, fair to say probably not). Therefore, there might be other biases in STEM in favor of boys that could explain the gender gap in their favor.
This is a super interesting analogy and it's changed my perspective a bit. But it all depends on your end goal. You say:
> We don't even know if the human brain is actually good at what it's doing.
What is it doing? Do we want our AIs to maximize learning or just human-like behavior? If it's the latter, I believe you absolutely want to look at neuroscience and emulate the human brain. Of course, airplanes are super good at flying, but they look nothing like birds.