Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 101 posts

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#41

Post by RyanZAG »

oldmanjay wrote: post #27
forrestthewoods wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to accept that people simply like people that look like them. And there's nothing wrong with that. Women in tech is important. Minority representation is important. And yes positive white male role models for little suburban straight white American boys is important.

You know what happens when everything is important, right?

Everything really is important though. If we push the guy who will cure cancer out of the system because he is white and male, then everyone who is not white and male loses out just as much. Obviously pushing out a Latino girl who would cure cancer would be equally bad. But the key words here are 'equally bad'. Equally important.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#42

Post by XorNot »

jqm wrote: post #19

Boys have trouble being ready for kindergarten and having self discipline. But those that do make it, even though they are fewer, tend to do better than their female counterparts in later life. Kindergarten activities and society's ideas of self discipline aren't really the conditions human life evolved under. Maybe fighting and looking for action/excitement are the same qualities that make boys successful later (if…

Evopsyche is pseudo-science.

EDIT: To expand - it is useless to speculate on psychology in an evolutionary context, because we have precisely 0 observation supported models of what anything was like many thousands of years ago. We do however have plenty of evidence that a lot of modern narrative was constructed to suit the current gender roles.

For example, "hunter-gatherer" is a complete misnomer. It should "gatherer-hunter". Because evidence shows that 80-90% of early nutrition was likely gathered by the tribe, and that hunting was exceptionally infrequent and probably a huge waste of resources the majority of time it was engaged in.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#44

Post by tajen »

enlightenedfool wrote: post #6

Glad that there's a discussion. It would help humanity to also give enough focus on boy child development so that we could save their future, avoid the crimes they commit and their languishing in jails.

For the statistics: In French prisons there are 3,5% of women.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#45

Post by tajen »

lambdapie wrote: post #29
jqm wrote: post #19

Boys have trouble being ready for kindergarten and having self discipline. But those that do make it, even though they are fewer, tend to do better than their female counterparts in later life. Kindergarten activities and society's ideas of self discipline aren't really the conditions human life evolved under. Maybe fighting and looking for action/excitement are the same qualities that make boys successful later (if…

Do you think this also implies that men have more incentive to become successful in their careers, if they choose the socially acceptable route? And if so, do you think this might partly explain why we see more men in high prestige/pay professions (e.g. tech)?

Should we really keep using the word "incentive"? It keeps presenting any success as something that doesn't belong to them. If they've worked hard for it, it's theirs, whatever the incentives.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#46

Post by paulmd »

XorNot wrote: post #42
jqm wrote: post #19

Boys have trouble being ready for kindergarten and having self discipline. But those that do make it, even though they are fewer, tend to do better than their female counterparts in later life. Kindergarten activities and society's ideas of self discipline aren't really the conditions human life evolved under. Maybe fighting and looking for action/excitement are the same qualities that make boys successful later (if…

Evopsyche is pseudo-science. EDIT: To expand - it is useless to speculate on psychology in an evolutionary context, because we have precisely 0 observation supported models of what anything was like many thousands of years ago. We do however have plenty of evidence that a lot of modern narrative was constructed to suit the current gender roles. For example, "hunter-gatherer" is a complete misnomer. It should "gathere…

It would certainly help if you would cite a source - I'm only coming up with blogs for the terms "gatherer-hunters".

Is there any evidence that this diet is nutritionally optimal?

If we don't have any long-term-supported models of what nutrition was like during the bulk of our evolution, then there can be no proof that humans can optimally function on whatever diets historically existed. There's pretty solid evidence that nutritional deprivation stunts both physical and mental development. There's also an overall trend towards higher IQ which has likely coincided with caloric and micronutrient satiation.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that "archaic" can be substituted by "better than". in the past, people spent an awful lot of their lives deprived of developmental needs, and humanity is clearly trending upwards as these needs (nutritional and otherwise) are addressed. Other factors include the elimination of contaminants like environmental lead.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#47

Post by TeMPOraL »

nv-vn wrote: post #23
pmalynin wrote: post #13

Where to even begin, Part of this issue I feel is, as mentioned in the article, is that boys are taught from the young age to take care of their problems, which leads to more isolation. Another important reason I feel is the rising amount of "girls-only" opportunities that systematically make boys feel inadequate and since they are not able to participate for whatever reason (e.g. "its only for girls") they continue…

>My point is (or rather society's) is that if you're male and have a good start then you're automatically golden, but for those that do not have the same starting opportunities there are simply no other options that are, on the other hand, available to girls from all backgrounds. This is definitely due to the mentality of "all boys are the same" and "all girls are the same" collectivist mentality that's so popular to…

Isn't North America / Western Europe going the flattening way? Most of the gender equality movement today seems to be focused on creating hatred and making life harder for one group, as well as forcing arbitrary and artificial adjustments.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#48

Post by tomp »

XorNot wrote: post #42
jqm wrote: post #19

Boys have trouble being ready for kindergarten and having self discipline. But those that do make it, even though they are fewer, tend to do better than their female counterparts in later life. Kindergarten activities and society's ideas of self discipline aren't really the conditions human life evolved under. Maybe fighting and looking for action/excitement are the same qualities that make boys successful later (if…

Evopsyche is pseudo-science. EDIT: To expand - it is useless to speculate on psychology in an evolutionary context, because we have precisely 0 observation supported models of what anything was like many thousands of years ago. We do however have plenty of evidence that a lot of modern narrative was constructed to suit the current gender roles. For example, "hunter-gatherer" is a complete misnomer. It should "gathere…

> Evopsyche is pseudo-science.

All of psychology is pseudo-science. I mean, two sigma. I can't even...

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

parennoob wrote: post #25

I suspect this is true for a larger cross-section of society in the USA – disadvantaged males are hurt more than disadvantaged females. However, advantaged males are way more successful than advantaged females. This leads to the somewhat paradoxical situation where males in high positions positing that men have an advantage because of their gender (because in the already advantaged group, they have seen the additiona…

I think a good start would be getting rid of the feminism-as-status-symbol problem. That guy who dismissed you because you're not a woman and therefore privileged was expressing a belief that's most likely just signalling his status as "enlightened person". If we can stop that, we can start having a movement towards equality that doesn't hurt both genders more than it helps them.

Re: A Disadvantaged Start Hurts Boys More Than Girls

#50

Post by TeMPOraL »

tomp wrote: post #48
XorNot wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evopsyche is pseudo-science. EDIT: To expand - it is useless to speculate on psychology in an evolutionary context, because we have precisely 0 observation supported models of what anything was like many thousands of years ago. We do however have plenty of evidence that a lot of modern narrative was constructed to suit the current gender roles. For example, "hunter-gatherer" is a complete misnomer. It should "gathere…

> Evopsyche is pseudo-science. All of psychology is pseudo-science. I mean, two sigma. I can't even...

Don't hyperbolize. It's not all. It's something around 95-99% of "soft science" research done in the last 50 decades. The older research was better, back before we turned the fields into a mix of signalling games and money pumps.

But don't worry. In the recent years we've seen that apparently 90% of medical research from last few decades is likely bullshit too.

Post reply on HN