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The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

news.nationalgeographic.com

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Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#71

Post by dragonwriter »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #70
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 is social and genetic; like most human behavior, nature and nurture are both involved. Pretending it's exclusively one or the other is foolishly reductionist, no matter which side you're on.

> Gender is social and genetic. Pretending it's exclusively one or the other is foolishly reductionist, no matter which side you're on.

Gender (both ascribed gender and gender identity, though the two are distinct but related) is social but references, in different ways, biological sex; biological sex is phenotype, and as such a mixture of genetic and environmental (but not at all social, except to the extent that the elements of phenotype that are defined to be "sex" are, like all definitions, a social construct.)

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#72

Post by PhasmaFelis »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #25
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…

Way to miss the point. And a very important point it is. But lets just snark about vocabulary instead. Its the activist way - invent a new jargon, or redefine the old one, as a way to draw a circle around the in crowd of savvy activists, and all the rest of us jerks.

That was sarcasm.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#73

Post by swayvil »

golemotron wrote: post #16
vzip wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Steven Pinker's'The Blank Slate' explains it well. Western culture has a bias toward nurture explanations rather than nature explanations because admitting nature affects people's perceptions of their abilities and our sense of agency as a culture. If all differences are culture we can fix them. That's why it becomes political.

Another reason to favor nurture explanations is that nurture explanations carry less weight in an argument than nature explanations.

There's no arguing with nature, it's the ultimate citation.

But nurture means that you, or somebody involved, had a choice. So the buck stops at, rather than the faceless divinity of nature, a mere human. And those are much easier to dismiss.

So we paint the opposing argument as arising from nurture rather than nature. And those arguments stick around and get cited. And a "it's all nurture" model develops.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#74

Post by digi_owl »

bonoboTP wrote: post #66
golemotron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steven Pinker's'The Blank Slate' explains it well. Western culture has a bias toward nurture explanations rather than nature explanations because admitting nature affects people's perceptions of their abilities and our sense of agency as a culture. If all differences are culture we can fix them. That's why it becomes political.

This is especially so in US culture. The "eveyone's responsible for their own fate" meme is still very strong there.

Its the unspoken shadow of "the american dream"...

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#75

Post by sarciszewski »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #63
sarciszewski wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

No they have not found such a marker. They have not found a definitive biological causal mechanism that causes transgendered traits. They have found correlations between certain biological mechanisms and transgendered traits. However these findings lead to only about a 70% correlation at most. Please note that the 70% correlation cannot be ignored. It indicates high likelihood of a causal connection. It is unwise to…

> There is no scientific study that proves this but you will note through common sense that males and females tend to act within their gender role over 95% of the time.

Then I propose such a scientific study be performed.

I don't like appeals to "common sense" in political matters (and unfortunately gender and sexuality is very political right now). Because, hey, if you're wrong, wouldn't that be an interesting result?

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#76

Post by swayvil »

bonoboTP wrote: post #66
golemotron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steven Pinker's'The Blank Slate' explains it well. Western culture has a bias toward nurture explanations rather than nature explanations because admitting nature affects people's perceptions of their abilities and our sense of agency as a culture. If all differences are culture we can fix them. That's why it becomes political.

This is especially so in US culture. The "eveyone's responsible for their own fate" meme is still very strong there.

It's a sneaky kind of authoritarianism.

Regular people are dismissed.

Only the faceless, invisible authority is respected.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#77

Post by soperj »

Retric wrote: post #68
astazangasta wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mi…

For clarity, 500 generations is easily enough for some things to shift frequency, but I agree it would be fast for a mutation to go global. However, thrown weapons are on the order of ~20,000+ generations which is plenty of time for mutation and adaptation. As to testing, I suspect we are going to get good at decoding and editing human DNA fairly soon which is going to have a lot to say about these debates. This stuf…

They believe the haast eagle evolved from the little eagle diverging just 700 000 years ago. That's going from one of the smallest eagles(0.8kgs) to the largest (11.5-14kgs) in under a million years.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#78

Post by kalzium »

araneae wrote: post #17
vzip wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're implying that people learn this at university. My experience was the opposite; I took an animal behaviour course at university that presented much of this information. Sexual dimorphism is a fairly major topic in animal behaviour. For instance, I learned that in every society where it was tested, men are more violent than women. But interestingly, the society itself was important as well; for instance, America…

Didn't the British exile lots of prisoners to North America in the early settlements?

Maybe there's also a genetic connection? ;)

Just joking.

I think overall happiness of people is also really important. The more unhappy people are the more violent they get.

People in Skandinavia are generally quite happy folks: Easy access to education, internet, food, health care, low poverty etc...

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#80

Post by Excavator »

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…

More accurate spatial reasoning could also be due to the need to navigate a complex environment, such as during hunting.

It could also be due to males having larger brains.

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