I wasn’t sure where to put the article, but since the debate comes up a lot these days I thought maybe a thread would be useful
Are there such a thing as male and female populations of humans? If so, what are the key characteristics that distinguish these two populations?
Here’s the article that I wanted to post. Simon Baron-Cohen again, seems he’s found a way to do research on sex differences that will generate less fury and vitriol
Disclaimer: there is a difference between individuals and populations, and we should all act accordingly
I don’t get it. Why is this a “new way” of doing research on sex differences that will generate less fury and vitriol? It appears to be just a confirmation of a well-known result (nothing wrong with that, of course - reproducing what’s “already known” is good science).
It seems to me that if people want to get offended about something, they’ll find a reason.
There’s another study finding that women make better traders because they’re more rational than men, who tend to make emotional decisions driven by competitiveness and testosterone. I find that pretty amusing.
arguably, those points being asked are likely less of a biological male female type question and more of a psychology, sociology, environmental and so on question. before those billions of variables can be worked into a halfway reasonable test, I doubt gender can reliably be tested based on biology.
either way, understanding extremely variable things like opinions, work ethics and so on based on sex isnt even close to reality yet. Even if people insist we (humans) know better. Too many variables to wade through before it can be accurately tested down to simply male or female. It just confuses people and prevents more useful study in my opinion. precisely because actuall answers cannot be drawn from such non diligent and unspecific “studies”.
Also, let us not forget the difference between individuals and populations, not to mention outliers. There is a kind of truth in numbers, which can be helpful for policy, right?
Who determines what reality is? Is there an objective reality we can all agree on? Perhaps on some things related to math and physics is as close as we get, but still need to put them through our subjective minds.
Indeed. We are forced to use massive generalizations for policy. that is “fine” I guess. but it isnt fine to think we have any kind of grasp on how this shit works, regardless of what our egos say. that’s a big issue in research, humble is nearly a 4 letter word in some circles. but seems to be improving, or at least in the fields i read about it seems to be more humble. but biology has always been a quite humble science i suppose. in comparison. We are all happy accepting our ignorance because we are shown daily how little we know.
I wasnt singling out his article specifically, more so just calling bullshit on things that discuss something like sex and confuse work output with it. That is just absurd right off the bat, and is absolutely more suited to a political conversation than a scientific one it just creates drama because reality is we have very little data to draw any sort of conclusions from.
but ya, policy must be made, so we do what we can. it’s just good to be humble and willing to dump the old and embrace the new data, not be married to it like so many political oriented things tend to go.
titles like: " Females on Average Perform Better Than Males on a ‘Theory of Mind’ Test Across 57 Countries" are fine only if they dont get regurgitated into females test better or some other nonsensical click bait thing that turns into “fact” to many people. It seems more likely other things are at play outside of vagina and penis acquisition.
That’s why I say there are too many variables. I said billions, but it’s probably much more than that. I doubt we will ever know. Regardless, we are certainly insanely far away from that concept of sex and work performance. Probably better metrics to concentrate on in my opinion.
indeed a good place to start. but perhaps not for social constructs like education and work outputs perhaps. For such things, social sciences would be more useful I think. not disregarding biology of course, just understanding how things are puzzled together and working like situations.
Seriously, though, I don’t know why people get so worked up about this. There’s no paradox in the idea that men and women are different while still being similar. If you pick any random ability and plot it on a bell curve, for most things you’ll find the two curves (for men and women) overlap with their averages very close to each other; but the left and right tails for males and females will be in noticeably different places, and it’s at the tails where differences become apparent in everyday life. You’ll also find some few traits where men and women are noticeably different even at the averages. Put those two observations together and you end up with … well, real life.
Where it all goes pearshaped is when people start arguing that “the bell curve is a construct of the patriarchy”, and similar.
The thing is, this is based on psychology and environment, not so much the physical sex differences. one could make a very real argument that society is biological, in fact I subscribe to that, but in a general sense the patriarchy is a construct of social issues not phenotypical issues.
it just creates drama because reality is we have very little data to draw any sort of conclusions from.