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The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

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Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#81

Post by ZeroGravitas »

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…

Putting aside the gender stuff, is he claiming aggression and heroism are the same thing?

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#82

Post by Retric »

Excavator wrote: post #80
Retric wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or to break out of the survival aspects, dance may have been important from an evolutionary standpoint.

IMO, the point is there are reasonable priors to actually start testing.

Some of these tests may be fairly simple. Do male baby's throw more things than female baby's?

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#83

Post by mystic001 »

ooo000ooo wrote: post #58
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 the…

Hasn't history shown us that this doesn't work?

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#84

Post by zo1 »

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.

I disagree. The opposite is ridiculously pushed from what I can tell of the online-manifestation of western culture. Rather, what I'd argue is the elephant in the room, is that it doesn't matter which of the two is the right answer. We should take responsibility for doing the right thing, regardless if our nature or our surroundings made us a certain way.

Barring certain extreme cases, of course, such as mental illness and such.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#85

Post by peterwoo »

ooo000ooo wrote: post #55
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/…

> 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.

Everyone understands that in the vast majority of times we use man/woman, he/she, or him/her, the intention is not to specifically draw attention to a person's reproductive organs. It doesn't take special schooling to detect this distinction, though it does require some thought to figure out what to make of it.

There would only be PC pressure to pretend a trans man has a penis if "having a penis" were a vital component of being a man, which it is not. In any case, the circumstances under which one finds themselves having to confirm the presence/character of another persons genitals usually either fall outside of or supersede the jurisdiction of "political correctness".

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#86

Post by Retric »

RodericDay wrote: post #61
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."

Noam Chomsky was concise on this point: > "You find that people cooperate, you say, ‘Yeah, that contributes to their genes' perpetuating.’ You find that they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that’s obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else's. In fact, just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it." Cordelia Fine also does a great breakdown of all of these "monkey does this, t…

That's not an actual counter argument.

You can say men are associated with blue for purely cultural reasons, because _

A: It's a 'just so' story which we can make about anything.

B: very recently they where associated with red and pink was considered a less intense version of red.

The B is an actual reasonable argument, where A has zero predictive power.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#87

Post by crimsonalucard »

sarciszewski wrote: post #75
crimsonalucard wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resul…

I take it back. There have been studies. Common sense and science are in line in this case. The amount of people who admit to operating outside of gender norms is http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-22/americ...

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#88

Post by crimsonalucard »

sarciszewski wrote: post #75
crimsonalucard wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resul…

>I don't like appeals to "common sense" in political matters

All things must often appeal to common sense regardless of the politics behind the issue. Males have penises and females don't, does a scientific study need to be conducted to prove this point? No. Because if we needed a scientific study for every possible issue without regard to common sense we would make zero progress on any topic.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#89

Post by crimsonalucard »

delecti wrote: post #69
crimsonalucard wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand corrected. However I could still argue that the concept has only recently become popularized.

The concept has only recently become popularized in the west, but the reality is not new that societal upbringing, reproductive sex, and mental self-image, while strongly correlated, aren't intrinsically linked.

That is a reality I do not agree with. Strong correlation indicates the high possibility of an intrinsic link, unless evidence states otherwise.

Below is a true story of a man raised as a woman, but unable to complete the sexual transition despite cultural upbringing, injections of testosterone and even testicular castration.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#90

Post by delecti »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #89
delecti wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept has only recently become popularized in the west, but the reality is not new that societal upbringing, reproductive sex, and mental self-image, while strongly correlated, aren't intrinsically linked.

That is a reality I do not agree with. Strong correlation indicates the high possibility of an intrinsic link, unless evidence states otherwise. Below is a true story of a man raised as a woman, but unable to complete the sexual transition despite cultural upbringing, injections of testosterone and even testicular castration. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

> unless evidence states otherwise

There is evidence in the form of the existence of transgender people. Some societies (as noted above) have been aware of the lack of an intrinsic link between apparent reproductive sex at birth and mental/social gender for quite a while, and analogous behavior is observed in some animals.

Just as you can't conversion therapy someone out of being transgender, David Reimer is evidence that you can't conversion therapy someone into being transgender.

Just because someone is born male, and raised as a boy, doesn't mean they'll agree once they can decide for themselves. They probably will, >99% of the time, but not always.

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