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The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

news.nationalgeographic.com

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Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#51

Post by phyllostachys »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #45
zajd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I thought it was fairly recent concept too until I learned this tidbit in a Anthropology survey course:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender#Indigenous_cultur...

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#52

Post by chillingeffect »

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…

Furthermore, the role of sex/gender in prisons is not fixed in time and culture.

For example, this article [1] shows that from 2003 to 2013, women in Chinese prisons increased by 46 percent. In that same period, women in American prisons increased by 15 percent. This is evidence that gender/sex does not impart a natural, fixed amount of criminality. Criminality varies in time and in response to stimulus.

[1] http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/women-07032015105910.h...

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#53

Post by bonoboTP »

minikites wrote: post #43
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/…

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?

I'm not saying we should ignore them. Just that for most people the two concepts "sex" and "gender" aren't separate, and trans people are simply regarded as quirky. For example there are people born with 6 functional fingers per hand but we still say that humans have 5 fingers per hand and don't say that humans have anywhere between 0 and 8 fingers per hand.

Treating sex and gender separately makes it seem like they just accidentally coincide in case of 99.x% of the people.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#54

Post by astazangasta »

Retric wrote: post #50
astazangasta wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Based on my understanding of genetics this reasoning is very unattractive. 500 generations is the blink of an eye in genetic terms, certainly not enough to establish a pervasive biological truth that splits the whole species across gender lines; maybe you could drive a single variant to global fixation in that time, certainly not a whole host of them. We also know nothing about how strong the selection in question might be. We know nothing, in fact, to suggest that evolution is "likely" other than our own gut feeling that it must be.

As for testing, that would be great. But it turns out that proving anything about human evolution is very hard, because most of the evidence is lost.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#55

Post by ooo000ooo »

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/…

> It's a niche thing.

One needs a very special kind of schooling and/or social circle to even imagine there's a difference. It seems to be very limited to (some) Americans.

Some people suffer from phantom limb syndrome. The pain is real, but the limb is not. We've not yet reached a point where the politically correct thing to do is to pretend otherwise.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#56

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

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.

It's not a clear distinction. It's easy to point to, say, trans people, and cite them as an example of people with differing sex and gender. Yet that's not quite true: a trans person who has undergone hormone treatment, for example, is not quite their birth-assigned sex.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#57

Post by bonoboTP »

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 was talking about the T (since the question was how come someone doesn't get that sex != gender). The LGB part is a lot more, some estimates are even around 10%. The "gender issue" is almost 2 orders of magnitude smaller than the sexual orientation issue.

So that's the explanation why most people don't "get" or even think about the distinction, but they know about gays and lesbians.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#58

Post by ooo000ooo »

mystic001 wrote: post #35

"We’re constantly dividing people into “us” vs. “them.” And once we put someone in the “them” category, it can open up the floodgates for violence and is the root of a lot of human misery and wars." Some may call this naive, but this is the reason we need more unity in the world. Less division. More us...less us and them. The media seems to do a great job of pitting one side against the other. I think many of our att…

> Some may call this naive, but this is the reason we need more unity in the world. Less division. More us...less us and them.

Then you have learned nothing. The tribalism in humans is hardwired. It's not going away, whatever we may wish or do. The media doesn't create the divisions, they just profit from them.

The key to peaceful coexistence is properly delineated regions and nations, so that each thede can have their land without being afraid of being invaded and replaced.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#59

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

vzip wrote: post #12
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…

It's kind of frightening that people are leaving university with a developed hostility toward the notion of sexual dimorphism in humans.

The hostility isn't to sexual dimorphism per se. If only because of hormones and reproduction, there is clearly sexual dimorphism. Anybody can see that.

The hostility is to the tendency to attribute differences between men and women to sheer biology without a careful consideration of other factors.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#60

Post by te_chris »

mystic001 wrote: post #35

"We’re constantly dividing people into “us” vs. “them.” And once we put someone in the “them” category, it can open up the floodgates for violence and is the root of a lot of human misery and wars." Some may call this naive, but this is the reason we need more unity in the world. Less division. More us...less us and them. The media seems to do a great job of pitting one side against the other. I think many of our att…

We live in a world of niches and algorithms that pander to our every whim, only showing us what we 'like', we're only getting more divided as a people.
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