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Don't dumb girls down

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Re: Don't dumb girls down

#111

Post by rmc »

jcromartie wrote: post #97
JonnieCache wrote: post #75

To all the people in this thread who seem so absolutely sure that the gender differences are strictly biological, do you fancy telling us what exactly makes you so sure? Last time I checked there was no evidence to support this idea. Obviously there are easily observed physiological differences in brain structure and in the endocrine system etc, however it is a massive leap to go from that to asserting that observed…

I feel like there has to be some kind of biological root (even if it's indirect, like if it comes out of social pressures which are based in sexual dimorphism) when nearly every culture in the world seems to have pretty much the same sort of normative ideas about men and women.

when nearly every culture in the world seems to have pretty much the same sort of normative ideas about men and women.

You're saying Saudi Arabia is like USA now? Have you even watched the TV show Mad Men? 1960s USA was different from 2000s USA.

Re: Don't dumb girls down

#112

Post by StavrosK »

Meai wrote: post #101
vectorpush wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could recount similar anecdotes, I think there is a lot to be said for the way that women who put their intelligence on display are treated. A talented intelligent male with an ego is regarded as a condescending elitist genius, but the same traits ascribed to a female makes her an intolerable bitch.

That is such a stereotype. If you are genuinely nice and intelligent, I can assure you that men would be very eager to battle their wits against yours. Most women just don't hold up to their own claims and they see such "attacks" as personal ; but the reality is that men are suddenly treating you as equal and you don't like it. Men do not discard a valuable member of a team just because of gender, that is ridiculous.…

I agree with that, there's nothing sexier than a battle of wits. Even more so if I lose.

Re: Don't dumb girls down

#113

Post by StavrosK »

saturn wrote: post #31

None of this advice applies to me, of course. As a man and therefore a child molesting rapist just waiting for my chance to strike, the idea that I could have any sort of conversation with a little girl - let alone sit down on a couch and talk privately - is simply laughable.

I feel sad for your culture :/

Re: Don't dumb girls down

#114

Post by Tichy »

knowtheory wrote: post #77
Tichy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to go there... I don't think psychiatric disorders are being caused by the media or by being told "you are pretty" too often when you are a child. By telling somebody they are pretty I am also not telling them that it's the "first, foremost, and most important above all of their other characteristics". You are creating a straw man here. Of course I don't think telling somebody they are pretty will cure th…

/me grins You don't get off that lightly. I am not straw-manning your argument, and i was not the one to raise the issue of eating disorders. My point is that you are ignoring context. Telling someone that they are pretty is not just a one off event that you are offering to another person, to be held in a pristine platonic form. It is an event that takes place in the gestalt of their daily interactions, and more spec…

I don't know that much about anorexia, but I suspect it doesn't have to do anything with beauty ideals at all (case in point: anorexia does not look pretty). It is more about control issues (I suppose).

I know it can hurt to feel ugly, though, so I don't think it is a bad thing to be reminded now and then that you are not ugly (at least not to everyone).

About pretty little girls: I was taught in biology class that babies are actually born to look cute (it is called "Kindchenschema" in German, other mammals also have it). It is a natural reaction to want to care for cute little humans, and it makes sense for little humans to look cute.

Sorry I did not understand how you are not creating a strawman. I think you are thinking way too much about all this. It seems important to me to act naturally with children to some extent, and not having to go through a endless mental checklist before reacting to them.

Re: Don't dumb girls down

#115

Post by robertskmiles »

Tichy wrote: post #74
robertskmiles wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? > by saying "citation needed" what you actually say is "I don't really care for your opinion". You're saying "I don't care for your random opinion you could have pulled out of your ass with no correspondence to the real world, please demonstrate that you didn't just make that up." When you make a claim that you want to be taken seriously, cite your source. It's not hard, and it's sure as hell not any…

Also consider this: if PG or Steve Jobs made some claim, would you also reply with a blunt "citation needed"?

If Steve Jobs made some claim about the history of Apple Computer, I wouldn't ask for a source because he is a source. If he were making a claim about the correlation between attractiveness and success, then yes I'd ask for a source, because why should he know anything about that in particular?

But even in that case, he's already a real person I know of, a person who is known to be pretty intelligent, a person whose motivations I can have a reasonable guess at, a person who I know needs to be careful about what they say in public fora. Each of these things put Steve Jobs a little ahead of 'random stranger on the internet' for reliability.

Re: Don't dumb girls down

#116

Post by lutorm »

orochimaru wrote: post #36

Of course people irrespective of their gender should be able to do what they want to, but hailing a genetic gift of smartness over a genetic gift of beauty, or vice-versa doesn't make sense. It's how evolution has worked up until now - it's pretty much a beauty pageant. Trying to change a process that has evolved us into what we are is going to take time. Of course not all aspects of evolution are perfect, but this -…

I don't know what your point is. Nowhere is the author making the point that you should hail any genetic gifts. And nowhere is she arguing that good looks are not beneficial.

Moreover, if you want to make Darwinian arguments, one could equally well say that without competition we'd all be as stupid as amoebas. I don't see where you get support for appearance being more favored than intelligence.

Furthermore, why do you focus on either of these attributes being genetic at all? If we assume that they are, then it shouldn't matter whether we encourage people to care about either their intelligence or appearance. But clearly there is a huge amount of nurture in both aspects, so the genetic aspect is just a red herring.

The real question is whether encouraging girls to focus on appearance over anything else is helpful or healthy.

Re: Don't dumb girls down

#117

Post by acdha »

JohnsonB wrote: post #94
JonnieCache wrote: post #75

To all the people in this thread who seem so absolutely sure that the gender differences are strictly biological, do you fancy telling us what exactly makes you so sure? Last time I checked there was no evidence to support this idea. Obviously there are easily observed physiological differences in brain structure and in the endocrine system etc, however it is a massive leap to go from that to asserting that observed…

>Obviously there are easily observed physiological differences in brain structure and in the endocrine system etc, however it is a massive leap to go from that to asserting that observed differences in behaviour are down to this rather than down to societal factors. It's actually no leap at all. Evolution put those differences in brain structure for a reason. It certainly isn't random, but due to some evolutionary be…

In other words, you missed the point entirely: this is more continued evidence-free speculation, complete with hand-wave theorization that there has been a gender-based task division matching the dominant Western religious-driven socialization for hundreds of thousands of years when we have no data for more than a small percentage of that period and considerable evidence that the proposed specialization wasn't globally true even during that small period of time where we do have data.

It's highly likely that there are measurable differences in the capabilities between male and female brains but neuroscience is very far from being able to explain anything high-level enough to start speculating about the complex skills relevant to these discussions: say, hypothetically, that we found evidence suggesting male brains tend to be 10% faster at detecting the path of a fast moving object or recognizing orientation of geometric shapes - does that tell you anything about someone's ability to write a research paper or debug a program?

The other major confound is that many people rely on MRI data to support claimed differences and even assuming that the technology is precise enough and the relevant brain structures well understood enough (neither of which is really true) all that will tell you is what the brain looks like now, not why: children who play the piano extensively will have different brain structure but it's from years of practice causing hypertrophy, not because there's a pianist gene pre-ordaining that they would be good performers.

Finally, "Evolution put those differences in brain structure for a reason" demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the mechanism: there are many, many examples of things which exist by accident (e.g. the crazy design of our eyes) or because they're connected to something which is beneficial enough to compensate for the drawbacks.

Re: Don't dumb girls down

#118

Post by Tichy »

robertskmiles wrote: post #103
Tichy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is this the new standard for conversations in the age of the iPad? In any conversation, people will wildly touch their pads to get the sources to show off to their discussion partners? Doesn't make much sense to me... I consider HN a casual discussion, not a scientific discourse. I might snatch up some ideas - if they seem interesting, I can do research to learn more. If your first reaction to whatever I say is "y…

> In any conversation, people will wildly touch their pads to get the sources to show off to their discussion partners? Well, in a 1-on-1 conversation, the value of n is 1 , so, consistent with what I said, that would be dumb. In fact in a real-time face to face conversation, the time taken to cite the source is more like X(n+1), because while you're looking up the source, the listeners are likely to be just watching…

"If people already know something, there's no point in posting it."

I think you expect something else from HN or this discussion than I do. I think it can be helpful to remind other people of facts in a discussion, lest they get carried away. Not every human exchange has to consist of novelties.

If I do maths, I might remind myself that 2+2=4. I have known it before, but chose to recall that knowledge at opportune moments. In discussions, other people can help with the recalling, it does not imply that the other parties were ignorant before. It is just about adding another perspective.

"I have nothing to go on, other than what you write"

In such situation I tend to resort to common sense. Does it seem plausible ("have merit") what the other person is saying? If yes, I might remember it as an interesting thought (not as established fact), or if it seems useful if true, might take further steps (Google) to verify it.

It's not that hard, and you don't have to insult the discussion partner.

Here is another idea: "That sounds interesting, do you by chance remember the source for that?" See the difference? But hey, it is the internet, there is no human on the other end.

Re: Don't dumb girls down

#119

Post by rimantas »

ErrantX wrote: post #49

I was musing on this the other day (beware; anecdote alert!). I went out for some drinks with a friend of mine from a long time ago - he is certainly not the sharpest of individuals, but a laugh and good fun in small doses (even if a lot of the jokes include farts :S). For some reason he is also constantly surrounded by very attractive women. I've seen him out and about before and thought "I'd like to have some of th…

You know, one of the two things from the lecture about education I had some 17 years ago which still stuck is this:

  Pay more attention to girls. Men will behave they way women let them to.

Re: Don't dumb girls down

#120

Post by jcnnghm »

erikb wrote: post #10

I often read such articles from women, but never from men. After looking deeply at myself and how the world around me acts, I feel that it is really true: Women ARE evaluated mostly by their looks. Women who look good, wear good clothes, have a good makeup, will get what they want much more easily then others. To some degree that is also true for men. It is just how the world IS. So instead of teaching girls about th…

I find these articles boorish. When I was a little boy I distinctly recall every stranger I met telling me how handsome I was because it's a superficial complement that can be delivered without great insight. Aunt's used to tell me that I'd "break some ladies hearts" because they didn't know me, and had no idea if I was intelligent or not. How intelligent can a five year old be, anyway? I didn't see little Maya pick any boogers at dinner, she is destined to be a civil engineer, at least. Even with all the complements, I don't recall developing an eating disorder or wearing makeup at an early age.

Men only earn 43% of bachelor's degrees. Isn't the real issue that men are not valuing education as much as women? Smart women have a huge advantage at this point, especially in the tech industry. If they start a company, the press can't stop talking about it. Women are more comfortable dealing with women, and men are more interested in talking to women. If four people with equal intelligence and experience apply for a job, an attractive man, and attractive woman, an average man, and an average woman, the attractive woman is hired first and the average man last. Women are far more socially mobile than men, women are being better educated than men, and many people are still crusading against some perceived injustice.

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