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Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

nature.com

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Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#91
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what your comment actually means. What gulfs? Men and women are complimentary. The masculine and the feminine interplay between each other and cooperate toward mutual benefit. There is no gulf. I reject the notion that we somehow have to eliminate the feminine and the masculine, to be left with some sort of androgynous average. That's just nonsense. And yes, some men can be feminine and…

No, there aren't, but a lot of people are firmly convinced that there are. Feminism and "political correctness" and your alleged "angry emotional mobs" exist as a necessary backlash to the (historically overwhelmingly popular) idea that Man and Woman are as complimentary and irreconcilable as opposite poles of a magnet. These people don't just assert that "boys, on average, prefer trucks to dolls," but that boys shou…

> No, there aren't, but a lot of people are firmly convinced that there are.

Any evidence of that?

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle, as it often does. It's fallacious to assume that there are no inborn differences between men and women. It's equally fallacious to insist (as many do and will, probably citing this study) that there are vast and uncrossable gulfs between men and women, and that anyone who crosses those gulfs anyway must be some sort of deviant. Humans are complex, the product of both nature and…

We'll said! Also, we should be careful not to impose new restrictive social conditioning while eliminating the legacy conditioning. We will never entirely succeed, but we should try. (In the same way that one can't drive 100% straight but one should still make a good effort.) Once one's movement for justice has crossed the line, where there are apologetics for the abandonment of that effort, it is then creating injus…

Oh, you Marxists and your never ending quest to "eliminate" this or that from the society. The human genes haven't changed in the past 10,000 years. There is nothing you can change that will not dive back into the previous state with some social unrest or crisis.

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#93
post #51
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's wrong to force traditional roles/identities onto those with a "queer" predisposition then the opposite is also true.

That's true, I'd oppose it if they really force the boy against his wishes to wear dresses, etc. But that's not clear from what I read because it's often described as 'forcing' when parents buy non-traditional toys and cloths for their children. So I'd need more context to say something about the described case. Personally I am not really sure if there even is something like a predisposition for sexual preference. Do…

Sexual preference is hardcoded in genes, right? Aren't you homophobic when you state otherwise? ;-)

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"All people are the same: race does not matter." In the U.S. whites score about one standard deviation above blacks on IQ tests such as WISC and Stanford-Binet, and in adoption studies that try to control for environment, this difference does not go away. Race is more than skin deep.

I've seen studies demonstrating the reverse: controlled for poverty, school, and whether a student has one or two parents, white and black American schoolchildren tested the same. (Standard deviation of 0.06: http://www.nber.org/papers/w12066 ) EDIT: Sorry, wrong paper. Looking for the right one. Even the fact that you point out "in the US" should be an indicator of the racism. I've never heard any other modern count…

Racial differences in IQ are surprisingly robust between and within countries: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IQ_by_Country.png

These differences are mirrored by PISA and IQ scores between nations, SAT scores within nations, and etc. It's not hard to find corroborating evidence, but most people don't want to.

http://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/#Race-IQ

It's hard to imagine that racism accounts for the entire explanation of such a global, consistent, and persistent phenomenon.

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#95
post #48

It's disappointing to see so many people here read the title of the article and immediately start the see,-social-differences-are-the-result-of-vast-differences-between-the-binary-sexes wheel rolling again. It's nowhere near a valid conclusion from the article's content. There are racial differences in gene expression (though much smaller), too, but I doubt anyone would upvote it or start a similar conversation about…

>It's disappointing to see so many people here read the title of the article and immediately start the see,-social-differences-are-the-result-of-vast-differences-between-the-binary-sexes wheel rolling again. But it's alright to just accept we're all products of socialization as a valid conclusion? >What's the alternative being suggested? A nuanced conversation on the interplay of biology and environment. Which there…

Let's say you were President of Harvard and you suggested such a conversation...

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#96
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"All people are the same: race does not matter." In the U.S. whites score about one standard deviation above blacks on IQ tests such as WISC and Stanford-Binet, and in adoption studies that try to control for environment, this difference does not go away. Race is more than skin deep.

Citation needed

There's a lot of delicious scientifically-backed crimethink at Jayman's: http://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#97
post #93
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, I'd oppose it if they really force the boy against his wishes to wear dresses, etc. But that's not clear from what I read because it's often described as 'forcing' when parents buy non-traditional toys and cloths for their children. So I'd need more context to say something about the described case. Personally I am not really sure if there even is something like a predisposition for sexual preference. Do…

Sexual preference is hardcoded in genes, right? Aren't you homophobic when you state otherwise? ;-)

I don't think so, there's a vast amount of LGBT authors who advocate the idea of sexuality as a social construct, be it homo-, hetero- or other sexualities

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#98
post #17
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this explain fields where the gender balance has drifted considerably over time?

Kudos sir or ma'am. The same argument can be levied at racism. If you go back to the year 1000AD, it's obvious that Europeans are of vastly inferior stock. The Chinese and the Arabs were doing optics and stuff while the Europeans were basically playing in the dirt.

You're talking about the Great Divergence, the historical curiosity starting in 1400 or so when the development of Europe left the rest of the world behind:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#99
post #20
post #13

Not to be too cheeky here, but what was the null hypothesis? That male and female brains would look exactly the same? Seems a bit like a so-called "straw man" (or straw woman?) hypothesis to me.

In hard science, the null hypothesis is often 'straw-man-like', and that's usually just fine. Because, oftentimes the straw-man haunts by being kind of true, sometimes. Reality is so strange that doing en experiment that controls well enough to (near-) conclusively exclude even a trivial hypothesis is a good experiment. Not the best experiment, but a good experiment.

You don't need a null hypothesis to do science. If you want to measure the strength of the Moon's gravitational pull, no-one's going to complain that you haven't outlined a null hypothesis.

There's all kinds of good science done that doesn't use the null hypothesis - it's a myth that if one isn't presented, then it's "not science".

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