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I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

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Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#141

Post by lambda »

maximusprime wrote: post #70
pbreit wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much easier for a single company to make some changes than it is for a single or even very large group of consumers to drive a change. It stinks, but every complaint about products asks for an Apple comparison. I would say both Apple and Pixar have demonstrated that sticking to the purity of your craft can be both fulfilling and extremely lucrative.

You assume people want a change. I do not think they do. Do people want an end to gender specific toys? Certainly some do. But the vast majority do not. I firmly believe, through interacting with people in general, and my own children, that female and male brains are completely different. They are hard wired to like different things, and behave differently. I don't see anything wrong with that, and don't see any reas…

> hard wired

I keep on hearing those words with respect to brains. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

Brains are not "hard wired" for much. They are really quite malleable and adaptable. They are affected by many things in the environment; experience, culture, training. The biggest differences between male and female children will come about from how they are raised, not innate differences. Once they hit puberty the hormonal differences will have more of an effect, though nothing that could be described as "hard wired", it's more a question of predisposition.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#142

Post by TeMPOraL »

nostromo wrote: post #53

When I see these stories taking companies to task over why they sell what they do, I always wonder why nobody holds consumers to task. For example: why doesn't Lego sell to girls? Why doesn't Barbie have more realistic features? Why don't car manufacturers offer an electric vehicle? Why doesn't McDonalds sell salads instead of fries? Why do record labels offer such crappy music? It's easy to blame the companies -- bu…

> It's easy to blame the companies -- but in reality it's very hard for a single company to change the macro culture that informs their product decisions. If you want to find the root cause, look at the users and ask why they demand the products they do. In this case: "why are so few parents buying Legos for their girls?" or "why do girls feel a stigma about playing with Legos?"

I don't believe there's a "root cause", or at least it's not on the same conceptual level as "companies" and "consumers". It's a feedback loop. Companies create markets and needs by marketing, but marketing is never done in vacuum, it's correlated with what people already need. There are lots of loops like that (concept of popularity, or TV - as the quote of Steve somewhere in this thread goes), and we have one side of the loop blaming the other side of the loop, where in fact each side is fine by itself; it's just the combination that's broken and seems to converge on something bad.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#143

Post by javajosh »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #100
nostromo wrote: post #53

When I see these stories taking companies to task over why they sell what they do, I always wonder why nobody holds consumers to task. For example: why doesn't Lego sell to girls? Why doesn't Barbie have more realistic features? Why don't car manufacturers offer an electric vehicle? Why doesn't McDonalds sell salads instead of fries? Why do record labels offer such crappy music? It's easy to blame the companies -- bu…

It goes along with the "soft bigotry of low expectations". We've come to a common mental model of the world that disempowers the individual, especially in the realm of responsibilities. The state and the corporation are the sole seats of responsibility and of blame, and thus the sole seats of power. It's more than a little disturbing to see people willingly disempower themselves in such a fashion for so little in ret…

There is nothing wrong with lamenting a change that takes away an easy, beneficial option. It is tacit acknowledgement that if you make the best choices easy to make, then more people will make them.

Given this basic fact, it is our responsibility to exert pressure on states and corporations to make the better options available to us.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#144

Post by sunahsuh »

maximusprime wrote: post #114
sunahsuh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take massive issue with this. We start the training with regard to gender so early that it's hard to tell what's "nature" and what's "nurture". I'm watching the choices my sister makes during her pregnancy with fascination. Gender is the earliest thing we bombard them with -- painting rooms pink, buying gendered clothes, choosing certain toys.. we don't even thinking about it because it's so normal until, for insta…

I expected people would take issue with it. Unfortunately some people really really want it to be the case that girls and boys are only different because of their environment. Given the way evolution works, doesn't that seem ridiculously unlikely? Given the way we evolved to have clearly defined roles, and how we have obvious physical differences to enable that, doesn't it seem pretty obvious that we evolved our brai…

Your grandparent post took the argument farther than just saying that evolution has given men and women certain tendencies or proclivities (as an aggregate, allowing for the massive range of individual differences that are possible). You flat-out claim that men and women have brains that are hard-wired a certain way. If there's anything evolution has given us as humans, it's brains that are amazingly adaptable and plastic. Research has shown that things like basic perception differ across cultures (see, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCller-Lyer_illusion). You make an apparently logical assumption based on what you understand of evolution and biology (and how the human brain works) but I proffer that there's a fair amount of evidence that those assumptions might be wrong. (For instance, we have this recent study questioning the widely-held belief that men are by nature better at spatial reasoning: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/women-math-science...)

> But at the same time claim that being 'girl' or 'boy' is something that you've been taught by culture??

You misunderstand the argument. The argument is that what it means to be a boy or a girl has been taught by culture. That being said, I do personally believe there's more room for inquiry into the nurture side of the equation and that the "entirely biological" argument is something that's currently politically expedient to counter the people claiming that it's entirely a personal choice. On a personal note though, my earliest memory of having a crush on another girl was in 2nd grade and my uber-religious parents certainly weren't nurturing such notions in me (nor was anything else in my environment explicitly).

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#145

Post by maximusprime »

lambda wrote: post #141
maximusprime wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume people want a change. I do not think they do. Do people want an end to gender specific toys? Certainly some do. But the vast majority do not. I firmly believe, through interacting with people in general, and my own children, that female and male brains are completely different. They are hard wired to like different things, and behave differently. I don't see anything wrong with that, and don't see any reas…

> hard wired I keep on hearing those words with respect to brains. I do not think they mean what you think they mean. Brains are not "hard wired" for much. They are really quite malleable and adaptable. They are affected by many things in the environment; experience, culture, training. The biggest differences between male and female children will come about from how they are raised, not innate differences. Once they…

You state these things as if they are fact. I disagree. People are born with different strengths and weaknesses. They may have particular skill in certain areas.

If brains are just "general" "maleable" "matter", then why as a man am I attracted to women and not men? I certainly didn't "learn" that. I'm attracted to women, because my brain was hard wired like that.

So you don't think people are "born gay"?

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#146

Post by maximusprime »

amitparikh wrote: post #123
maximusprime wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS @ trend. Go back 50 years and it was dolls and toy guns. Nothing has changed, boys still like building and destroying, and girls still like caring about things and craft things. You can try all you want to make boys play with dolls, and girls play at killing each other, but they won't in general, because it's not in their biological makeup to do so.

I think the point here is that Lego is fondly remembered as -- and maybe even should be -- a gender-neutral toy. There was never anything inherently male or female about Legos. In fact, I remember playing with my younger sister often -- I'd be building a spaceship on one side, and she'd be putting together a house on the other. The problem is that Lego has gotten away from being a gender-neutral toy and is now market…

BS. Utter BS. It is marketed to everyone.

(Speaking as a father of a daughter who has a massive Lego collection and plays with it lots).

It's depressing to see so many comments that seem to believe we're all powerless to go against marketing and advertising. YOU are the problem.

If you're a parent, BUY YOUR KIDS SOME LEGO.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#147

Post by pbhjpbhj »

wanorris wrote: post #125
fennecfoxen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here's a news story about twin boys, one of whom decided he'd rather be a girl. Pretty much essentially the same "nurture". Still want to blame society when the girl decides she wants to wear pretty dresses? I think that's a hard sell. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2011/12/11/led-child-who-si...

Given that they're identical twins, I think it's also pretty clear that this case undercuts the argument that it's all just genetics as well. Oh, and "decided he'd rather be a girl" is generally considered offensive to trans people. She believes that she's always been a girl, and did not "decide" anything of the kind. Her physical characteristics were simply misleading regarding her true gender.

>"is generally considered offensive to trans people"

Isn't that just being delusional. If I decide that I should have been born as superman, does that mean you now all have to refer to me as the Man of Steel and ignore the fact that I wasn't born with the organs (X-ray eyes, etc.) that would make it possible for me to be said person.

Except in cases of genetic sex indeterminacy a person is born either male or female regardless of what they think they should have been or currently want to be.

You're welcome to adopt your own self-vision but imposing unreality on others is beyond reasonable expectations of society.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#148

Post by maximusprime »

codemac wrote: post #97
nostromo wrote: post #53

When I see these stories taking companies to task over why they sell what they do, I always wonder why nobody holds consumers to task. For example: why doesn't Lego sell to girls? Why doesn't Barbie have more realistic features? Why don't car manufacturers offer an electric vehicle? Why doesn't McDonalds sell salads instead of fries? Why do record labels offer such crappy music? It's easy to blame the companies -- bu…

I blame companies instead of consumers because they market the shit out this stuff. No one is born with an innate desire for that specific Barbie or Lego set. The companies market to you, make you feel like you want it. The companies may not be able to change the entire macro environment, but they actively profit and exploit it. So yea, they are way more to blame than what 11 year old girls think their place in the w…

Depressing to see people blaming advertising and marketing as if they as parents are powerless to buy their daughter a lego set unless an advert says they can.

If adverts have more of an influence on your kids than you do, then you're a terrible parent.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#149

Post by DarkShikari »

ericabiz wrote: post #98
DarkShikari wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(By the way, if you ever want a conclusive argument that girls being raised to love pink and hate math is societal The most staggering thing about these assumptions is not merely how they contradict current scientific understanding, but they contradict reality . Pink used to be a boys' color: the idea of pink as "girly" didn't exist 100 years ago. Ironically, this commonly-given-example is itself a fantastic example…

Agreed. Thank you for your post! That's basically exactly what the book I recommended says, except she goes into 200+ pages of detail about it (with much supporting evidence.)

It is -- and that book should be required reading for anyone making any comment on this subject. It's shocking how often I see posts, especially on Hacker News, that take for granted "gender differences" that have been proven not to exist! And often by self-proclaimed scientists and skeptics, no less.
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