Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
What are the real facts? We have been researching issues of gender and STEM (science, technology engineering and math) for more than 25 years. We can say flatly that there is no evidence that women’s biology makes them incapable of performing at the highest levels in any STEM fields. Many of Damore’s controversial conclusions rest heavily on one recent study and much older, now-discredited research, ignoring reams of data that tell a very different story.
Comments
Aaargghgh, I hate these discussions, but...
we keep getting these "there's no such thing as a pink or blue brain", when it would be absolutely stupid to think that a wholly differentiated brain by gender existed. Instead, we get an easy-to-believe 2.4-6% difference in brain structure. That in hereditary genetics terms is a rather significant difference to pass on from generation to generation. Some gorillas' DNA differs from human DNA by about 1.6% - trivial? meaningless? if we say "we haven't detected any difference in gorilla intelligence or behavior based on its DNA" would you find that conclusive in the way the similarly posited statement about gender brain differences and intelligence, behavior, whatever?
Women and men obviously have different physical makeup, and there may be some brain difference that affects thought processes, logic, life strategies, other aspects of cognitive behavior.
Which version is "better" is highly arbitrary/subject to whim, convenience and bias, and it's near impossible to separate survivability based on cognitive processes vs. physical ncidents
I've spent a lot of time discussing Kahnemann who notes that much of our "logic" isn't logic at all, but lazy "brain" trying to avoid too much sweat thinking. Since many of these judgement calls are flat-out wrong,even for very intelligent people, it's kind of absurd to be trying to determine which is the prima homo logiicus version of Modern Apes, male and female, when we're both likely to be making significant mistakes practically all the time.
And then there are all the cultural effects and expectiations and biases, plus simply the duties that women have to do that go much past what men have to do often which can kill a career, though that's partially tempered by men holding on average much more dangerous jobs than women.
I didn't find the original Google letter too bombastic, and quite frankly I'm not the only one to try raising girls less gender-biased only to discover give-it-up,, nature or nurture or whatever is winning and you can cry uncle now.
And then there's fairly obvious, "which gender is more likely to cause violent crimes, steal things, do drugs..." etc, etc. We can recognize all sorts of differences at physical and genetic level, but supposedly all this difference maps to nothing when it comes to brain and behavior and intelligence, even though lots of other gender-specifica physiology is hugely different.
Maybe men have greater capacity for sheer boredom and wasteful meaningless pursuits, which makes them more suited for a STEM career. Is designing a line of high fashion clothes inherently inferior in mental demand than designing a web page or installing an A/C system? Is there a way to tie dolls into computer science the way we tie dungeons and dragons into computer science (even though DnD doesn't seem to have much to do with computers aside from someone who writes video games).
I somehow think we're just "proving" over and oer the same preordained answers to this conversation, and it seems to go nowhere.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 08/11/2017 - 7:57pm
I'm not much into a discussion of male female biological brain differences either. But it is in the news right now so I thought I toss up an article to see if anyone had anything to say on it. My view, we know there is so much sexism and misogyny out there that I don't see how we can separate it out to see what differences are from biology. We've got so much work to do to eliminate cultural effects before we can get some idea of what, if any, differences come from biology.
by ocean-kat on Sat, 08/12/2017 - 2:39am
I know, not blaming you, hust some of these articles and their conclusions... I mean, sure, evolution created 6-10% of brain matter with 0 function just for the hell of it, perhaps an art project or a hobby like collecting stamps. Just cause we don't know know doesnt mean we wont figure it out in 10,20,50 years...
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 08/12/2017 - 2:44am
How marketing killed off women in IT?
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 08/13/2017 - 4:24pm