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Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

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Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#41
post #15

Viewing the initial question from a perspective of social status the answers the article makes have pretty simple answers. Males competing between other males in video games and win gains a perceived gain in social status, so when they put down the game and face others around them there is a natural clash as the social status gain is seen nor recognized by the social environment outside the game. Aggression is common…

Where do you think those differences in social status competitions originate from if not from brain differences?

I would submit that the brain differences are actually a byproduct of a larger dynamic.

Historically, pregnant women and women with small children faced much more difficulty capturing and maintaining adequate resources on their own. Predation, lower upper-body strength, releasing a scent for one week per month, not to mention the metabolic and time constraints created by nursing and mothering small children in general, all created huge, difficult barriers to survival for women.

Historically, men were able to gather more resources from the environment than they needed (primarily through hunting, but later through farming), so they could share their resources with the women and children. However, men didn't want to share their resources with the genetic offspring of other men, so they wanted monogamy in return for support.

At a high level, men gathered resources from their environment, and shared them in exchange for monogamy and adequate care for their offspring, and women, historically, gathered resources from relationships (with both men, for food, shelter, and protection, and from women for child care and protection).

This is the main cause for differentiation between men and women. Because of this division of capabilities, the brains of men and women began to differentiate and evolve because they faced different challenges in their environment.

Men needed to be able to hunt, to work, to go without food for longer periods of time, and to work as a group to hunt large game. Testosterone helps all of those activities. Those who were more successful at these activities had more progeny that survived.

Women needed to be able to successfully raise children, gather local food, process furs, and cook food.

Men would all go hunting together in groups to reduce/eliminate opportunities for philandering, and women would stay in groups to protect each other and to help care for each other's young.

This all got flipped around and mixed up by the industrial revolution, the world wars, antibiotics, vaccines, and birth control. IMO, this is the battleground of the current culture war, because for most of human history, resources were scarce and infant mortality was high. These arrangements have been in place for hundreds of thousands of years.

The recent change in access (and abundance) to resources I listed above (among many others) has fundamentally changed access to resources. As an illustration, the most pressing problem facing the poor class in America is obesity. This is unprecedented, and no one has a good guide for how to move forward.

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#42
post #21
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I do that?

Under the title, there should be a link that says "vouch".

You likely need to have sufficient karma to vouch for an article. I don't know what that level might be, as I don't see that option either. Though dekhn's karma is higher that yours.

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#43
post #15

Viewing the initial question from a perspective of social status the answers the article makes have pretty simple answers. Males competing between other males in video games and win gains a perceived gain in social status, so when they put down the game and face others around them there is a natural clash as the social status gain is seen nor recognized by the social environment outside the game. Aggression is common…

Where do you think those differences in social status competitions originate from if not from brain differences?

If we take a look at the animal kingdom, females compete for social status over other females in order to get the best males, and males compete for social status over other males in order to get the best females. Both does this in order to get the best offspring as part of evolution and natural selection. You get differences when there is a difference in investment during the reproduction, like egg and sperm.

Looking at humans it obvious also that there is a strong cultural aspect to it. In one culture the apex male attribute to reach the top of the social status ladder would be to go into the jungle and kill a lion with nothing but a spear. In an other it is to have the title of CEO and have a high number listed in a bank account. Both is about a social status hierarchy, but with very different method for competition.

Going back to the article, a man gains social status if he display superiority over other males in a video game. Why? Video games represent physical games which represent competition of strength and skills. We can imagine a culture where that would not gain any social status and then any association with aggressiveness would go away. No brain surgery required.

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> biology studies like this are unfortunately controversial to the general public these days. ...but this site is not catering to the general public but to self-proclaimed hackers , a species which used to pride itself on intellectual curiosity. I should know, being one of them and being as curious as I manage to find the time for. Knee-jerk flagging is definitely not something which goes together with this definitio…

Just because there's the word hacker here doesn't mean this is a hacker space for hackers now, and nor that it will ever trend in that direction... Some people just want an emotionally calm place to discuss ongoing industry trends they have to keep up with, a superior Reddit with more serious chat. Which group will come to define the character of this place?

> Some people just want an emotionally calm place

In an emotionally calm place nothing of substance can be discussed as emotions tend to rise and fall with the importance of the subject matter. Whether it is vi vs Emacs (which is totally subjective), Linux vs Windows (which is a bit of everything), Free Software vs Open Source (which leans towards politics), Bare metal vs virtualisation (which is purely technical) or a discussion on the differences between men and women (which is biology), some hackles will be raised somewhere.

And yes, this being _Hacker news_ I do feel (which is an emotion) this place _should_ allow open and honest discussion of subjects like these. The mere fact that someone disagrees with you does not make that opinion any less valid or valuable. Where there is a diversity of opinions there _will_ be disagreement, and that is actually a good thing as there is not much less conducing to intellectual discourse than an echo chamber where everybody either agrees or keeps quiet.

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#46
post #32

Is there a way to design the flag mechanism so that quality articles do not die even though they are polarizing?

In theory, the mods can whitelist those articles manually after seeing them repeatedly flagged and vouched for. However, we know that the mods have already seen this article since the link was changed from the archive to the paywall URL. In addition, I believe they've said in the past that they want to discourage particularly controversial stories. And biology studies like this are unfortunately controversial to the…

We haven't said that in the past or in the present. Plenty of controversial stories appear on HN, as anyone who reads the site regularly would know. The issue is whether there is enough that is intellectually interesting and new in an article to support a substantive, unpredictable discussion. That's a simple consequence of intellectual curiosity being the core value of HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#47

FWIW when I posted it 40 minutes ago I linked to an unpaywalled full-length version on http://archive.is/ . Gotta be fast, I guess.

It's not ok to post a copy of an article from a completely unrelated domain; it's important that the site name that shows up next to the title be the original source.

If you have a link to another source, it's ok to post that in the comments.

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#48
post #33
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, the mods can whitelist those articles manually after seeing them repeatedly flagged and vouched for. However, we know that the mods have already seen this article since the link was changed from the archive to the paywall URL. In addition, I believe they've said in the past that they want to discourage particularly controversial stories. And biology studies like this are unfortunately controversial to the…

I agree with your assessment; I believe the site admins are intentionally not unflagging this article to avoid controversy. It would be nice if they could come out and say that directly.

Not true. I only just saw this and have turned off the flags. The main problem from my perspective is that the thread has filled up with completely off topic comments about flagging and a lot of inaccurate meta stuff.

Re: Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media

#50
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think those differences in social status competitions originate from if not from brain differences?

If we take a look at the animal kingdom, females compete for social status over other females in order to get the best males, and males compete for social status over other males in order to get the best females. Both does this in order to get the best offspring as part of evolution and natural selection. You get differences when there is a difference in investment during the reproduction, like egg and sperm. Looking…

>In one culture the apex male attribute to reach the top of the social status ladder would be to go into the jungle and kill a lion with nothing but a spear. In an other it is to have the title of CEO and have a high number listed in a bank account.

These are very similar from a behavioral perspective because they both involve aggression and risk-seeking.

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