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The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

news.nationalgeographic.com

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Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#41

Post by astrodust »

cpdean wrote: post #2

R Douglas Fields grossly misinterprets how much people are exposed to influences their behavior. "Something like 90 percent of the people in prison for violent crimes are men." Something about all these people make them terrible humans, but it's not an adrenaline response. He's belittling all the social problems in his book by attributing them to neurological reflexes.

I do wonder if incarceration rates are different because women are treated differently at trial for violent offences. It's certainly not the only factor, but it could skew things even further than they would otherwise be.

Is it presumed that women are unlikely to reoffend where men are assumed to be likely to?

It's like how it's difficult to get female abusers prosecuted for just about anything, including rape or spousal abuse. There's some kind of bias here.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#42

Post by sarciszewski »

goda90 wrote: post #19
sarciszewski wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To split hairs a bit: Gender identity is a social construct while biological sex is not. I think the author meant sex, not gender, and GP meant gender, not sex. It's easy to conflate the two in conversation, but keeping a semantic barrier between them will help maintain civil discourse without the risk of devolving the discussion into a flame war.

The thing is, gender identity is very much affected by sex too. Many outward behaviors that are often classified as masculine or feminine have roots in different hormone levels in the sexes. That's why I dislike that many attack gender roles and other social gender norms indiscriminately. Some of them have a basis in nature and it's healthy for the vast majority of people to embrace them. At the same time there shoul…

> The thing is, gender identity is very much affected by sex too.

Affected by? Yes.

The same thing? No.

> That's why I dislike that many attack gender roles and other social gender norms indiscriminately.

Huh. That sounds like something I'd expect to read about firsthand on Tumblr moreso than something that reasonable people would do.

> At the same time there shouldn't be any room for attacking those who don't follow the norms either. And of course some norms are just harmful. It's not so easy to just throw them all out.

I think that's fair.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#43

Post by minikites »

bonoboTP wrote: post #26
zajd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gender =/= Sex How it is so many people don't grasp this is beyond me.

Because the conceptual difference doesn't exist for about 99.9% of people. Also, most languages have no such distinction. For example in my native language Hungarian we either use the English word "gender" or say (the equivalent of) "social sex" and "biological sex". It's a niche thing. I understand that some people feel sensitive about sex/gender or the differences between transsexual/transgender/transvestite/queer/…

If you pool the various genetic causes of intersex conditions (neither unambiguously male nor unambiguously female) it's about the same percent of the population as natural red hair. Should we ignore people with red hair?

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#44

Post by neffy »

shasta wrote: post #30
astazangasta wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pinker is full of shit on this subject. I remember his intro to psych lecture including an example of a how gendered thinking is hard-wired involving small boys playing with guns. Obviously an example of socialization; evolution did not teach anything to anyone about guns. There is a huge amount of sloppy thinking in this subject.

Could you expound upon your definitely-not-sloppy thoughts on why boys obviously couldn't be predisposed to playing with weapons?

Distaff side here. I loved playing with guns when I was a kid. My parents though thought they weren't suitable for girls, so they were quickly banned. So I made my own bow and arrow set, needless to say, that didn't last long in the suburbs. Then I finally got smart, and they never found about the slingshot.

And I was enlightened.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#45

Post by crimsonalucard »

zajd wrote: post #22
golemotron wrote: post #9

> When you look at the subject of aggression there is no more important factor than gender. Something like 90 percent of the people in prison for violent crimes are men. Men have different brains than women, which comes from our different roles during evolution, when the brain was formed. Men had a role of being aggressive, which makes no sense for a woman because a woman was not endowed with the physical strength of…

Gender =/= Sex How it is so many people don't grasp this is beyond me.

As fluid as people wish it was, certain gender identities highly correlate with certain sexes. To be male sexually and female behaviorally is abnormal, statistically speaking.

This gender =/= sex is a recent concept invented by mankind.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#46

Post by astazangasta »

Retric wrote: post #36
astazangasta wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pinker is full of shit on this subject. I remember his intro to psych lecture including an example of a how gendered thinking is hard-wired involving small boys playing with guns. Obviously an example of socialization; evolution did not teach anything to anyone about guns. There is a huge amount of sloppy thinking in this subject.

People have been using bows for 500+ generations and ranged weapons for even longer. That's plenty of time for a preference for ranged combat to show up (ed: become frequent). The Atoal is believed to be ~30,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower And spears are ~400,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amentum is rather hard to date, but it's simpler than an Atoal.

This is the kind of argument I am criticizing; "its possible based on our vague understanding of the evolutionary background and selection that this behavior is adaptive, therefore my speculation that this behavior is genetic and the product of evolution is correct."

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#47

Post by sarciszewski »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #37
sarciszewski wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To split hairs a bit: Gender identity is a social construct while biological sex is not. I think the author meant sex, not gender, and GP meant gender, not sex. It's easy to conflate the two in conversation, but keeping a semantic barrier between them will help maintain civil discourse without the risk of devolving the discussion into a flame war.

I hate to break it to you. But behavior and gender is determined by genetics. Therefore gender identity is not just a social construct but a biological one as well. Take for example the correlation between feminine behavior and two X chromosomes (XX). There is high correlation between these two factors. Additionally examine the correlation between masculine behavior and XY. Again another high correlation implying the…

> I hate to break it to you. But behavior and gender is determined by genetics. Therefore gender identity is not just a social construct but a biological one as well.

I must admit my knowledge of the scientific literature around the relationship between biological sex and gender identity is limited. Have they found a genetic/epigenetic/hormonal marker that correlates with 95%+ of transgendered people yet?

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#48

Post by sarciszewski »

astrodust wrote: post #38
bonoboTP wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the conceptual difference doesn't exist for about 99.9% of people. Also, most languages have no such distinction. For example in my native language Hungarian we either use the English word "gender" or say (the equivalent of) "social sex" and "biological sex". It's a niche thing. I understand that some people feel sensitive about sex/gender or the differences between transsexual/transgender/transvestite/queer/…

Around 0.3% of the population in the US can be identified as transgender, so that knocks it down to 99.7%. Then there's other factors, where people don't adhere to any particular binary gender at all, which erodes that even further. When you include the full spectrum of LGBTQI you probably have to cut that down to no more than 95%, possibly less. When you say "for the vast majority" you presume they operate in isolat…

I've known three, and I don't have an awful lot of friends and acquaintances. I also don't go out of my way to only talk to LGBTQI folks. (I do, however, go out of my way to talk to people interested in technology and especially computer security.)

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#49

Post by [deleted] »

golemotron wrote: post #9

> When you look at the subject of aggression there is no more important factor than gender. Something like 90 percent of the people in prison for violent crimes are men. Men have different brains than women, which comes from our different roles during evolution, when the brain was formed. Men had a role of being aggressive, which makes no sense for a woman because a woman was not endowed with the physical strength of…

[deleted]

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#50

Post by Retric »

astazangasta wrote: post #46
Retric wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been using bows for 500+ generations and ranged weapons for even longer. That's plenty of time for a preference for ranged combat to show up (ed: become frequent). The Atoal is believed to be ~30,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower And spears are ~400,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amentum is rather hard to date, but it's simpler than an Atoal.

This is the kind of argument I am criticizing; "its possible based on our vague understanding of the evolutionary background and selection that this behavior is adaptive, therefore my speculation that this behavior is genetic and the product of evolution is correct."

That's not what I said. I said there was enough time, not that anything actually happened. Thus evolution did not teach anything to anyone about guns is not a supported statement.

Also, a preference for guns may or may not be there. But, males having more accurate spatial reasoning due to ranged weapons, or hunting, and or fighting seems likely. The obvious alternatives are men developed better spatial reasoning due to very widespread cultural factors seems suspicious. Or women scarified spacial reasoning for some competing features.

Anyway, the important thing is not to debate this stuff it's to actually test it. Until then it's all just hot air.

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