Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013) • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by Fomite » Tue, Feb 11, 2014, 11:53 PM UTC

cwaniak wrote: post #92

stcredzero wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This will come as a shock to those who are lactose intolerant, a mutation whose rise is in the vicinity of that time period.

Protip: Evolution doesn't actually stop.

Unless that was sarcastic. At which point, carry on :)

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

#122

Post by Fomite » Tue, Feb 11, 2014, 11:57 PM UTC

discostrings wrote: post #34

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…

I am coming to the observation that Hacker News, as a population, tends not to read the scientific papers they talk about.

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

#123

Post by Fomite » Tue, Feb 11, 2014, 11:58 PM UTC

toufka wrote: post #20

plg wrote: 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.

Hell, given the null hypothesis is an assertion of perfect equality, I'd argue it's inherently a straw-man. It's one of the reasons behind "Fail to reject H0" rather than "Accept".

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

#124

Post by Fomite » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 12:00 AM UTC

scott_karana wrote: post #74

Beliavsky wrote: post #32

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…

I've been in any number of modern countries speculating about the inferior intellects of a minority.

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

#125

Post by acdha » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 12:14 AM UTC

mudil wrote: post #28

mudil wrote: post #12

That's exactly why we don't have many women in tech and most readers of HN are guys. All this political correctness and attacks on PG are simply BS: men and women are different. Not better, not worse, just different. It's evolution of sex, stupid. PS. My previous comment on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7041221

Those of you who downgrade my comment should put that PC stuff aside, and consider reading about the evolution of sexuality. Such as "The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" by Matt Ridley, and "The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature" by Geoffrey Miller. All your wishful thinking will never make women and men the same.

You weren't downvoted for making the tautological observation that men and women aren't the same but for attempting to use science as a cloak for shoddy reasoning:

There's no question that things like hormone levels are likely to have some sort of effect but your response begs huge questions such as how low-level differences affect incredibly complex higher-level processes like cognition, how much a skill like programming depends on such specific cognitive abilities, and even how important a single area of expertise like programming is to overall success in such a wide field which requires a range of different individual skills as well as complex social behaviour on multiple levels.

There is still plenty of Nobel-level groundbreaking research yet to be done for each of those questions but instead you simply chose to ignore all of that hard thinking and simply assert that simple biological determinism explains the gender distribution across an entire profession.

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

#126

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 12:30 AM UTC

phaer wrote: post #35

s_baby wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. I personally know a lesbian couple that forces their boy to wear dresses, play with dolls, and talk down anything traditionally "male". I completely agree with your original post but it's hard to deny there's a turd in the feminist kool-aid bowl and no one is willing to pull it out.

> Speak for yourself. I personally know a lesbian couple that forces their boy to wear dresses, play with dolls, and talk down anything traditionally "male". I am sorry, I don't see how that would be the same as "denying any difference between men and women". Do you really think, or even have proof which shows, that playing with dolls or wearing dresses is biologically, not socially, "male"? A lot of clothing convent…

> Do you really think, or even have proof which shows, that playing with dolls or wearing dresses is biologically, not socially, "male"?

I belive there were some experiments with babies by Trond Diseth that showed that babies have a natural tedency towards interacting with gender specific toys.

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

#127

Post by AutoCorrect » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 1:06 AM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #82

AutoCorrect wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what the GP means is that there is a very vocal, very vitriolic subsection of the feminist movement that claim there is NO reason for the differences in men and women, other than the historical repression of women by men. Which couldn't be further from the truth: up until recently, women were very much at the mercy of the groups of men around them (physically), and only recently has the value of women in soci…

> there is a very vocal, very vitriolic subsection of the feminist movement It's also a tiny and unpopular subsection of the feminist movement. They're outnumbered a hundred to one by dudes who like to use them as strawmen. > only recently has the value of women in society dropped to that of men. I don't think that makes any sense. I mean, I literally don't understand what you're trying to say, and none of your asser…

>I don't think that makes any sense. I mean, I literally don't understand what you're trying to say, and none of your assertions seem to be relevant to each other.

Think about it this way: which sex has historically been unequally represented in the most dangerous jobs? And which sex is STILL the only sex that has to sign up for the draft?

And sure they're relevant.

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

#128

Post by drewcrawford » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 1:15 AM UTC

jforman wrote: post #47

FD3SA wrote: post #2

It is my sincere hope that this understanding becomes pervasive in society, such that the inane social movements based upon naught but angry emotional mob mentality become part of history. As it stands, young boys are medicated with psychiatric drugs for beings boys, and this is deemed acceptable by society. Boys are failing at every step in public institutions, with higher drop out rates at all levels of schooling.…

What "understanding"? This paper provides no evidence whatsoever that sex-biased gene expression is due to nature rather than nurture. They collected data from adults only (well, 2 people were under 20 out of 137 subjects). You aren't sporting much evidence to justify a righteous rant against your "angry emotional mob mentality."

While you are correct that this particular study offers no real evidence in the nature/nurture debate, my understanding of neuroscience is that the existence of early differences in gender-based behavior are so well established in the discipline that to publish on that result is no longer interesting to neuroscientists. What remains at this point is to figure out a mechanism behind that result. So the line of inquiry behind this paper is not so much "whither behavioral differences?" but rather "Given this large body of research over the past 10 years that demonstrates behavioral differences, what can we see in the brain that might be a mechanism for this result?"

If you are not familiar with that earlier body of research establishing behavioral differences, these studies might be a place to start, and then of course you can walk the bibliographies to find more.

http://www.psy.miami.edu/faculty/dmessinger/c_c/rsrcs/rdgs/e...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571891304...

http://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9219513/

http://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~dcampb/Campbell.InfantMetaALSex...

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

#129

Post by lambdaphage » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 1:19 AM UTC

Fomite wrote: post #121

cwaniak wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This will come as a shock to those who are lactose intolerant, a mutation whose rise is in the vicinity of that time period. Protip: Evolution doesn't actually stop. Unless that was sarcastic. At which point, carry on :)

Adult lactose tolerance is the mutant phenotype-- intolerance is the norm.

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

#130

Post by haberman » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 1:25 AM UTC

drewcrawford wrote: post #128

jforman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "understanding"? This paper provides no evidence whatsoever that sex-biased gene expression is due to nature rather than nurture. They collected data from adults only (well, 2 people were under 20 out of 137 subjects). You aren't sporting much evidence to justify a righteous rant against your "angry emotional mob mentality."

While you are correct that this particular study offers no real evidence in the nature/nurture debate, my understanding of neuroscience is that the existence of early differences in gender-based behavior are so well established in the discipline that to publish on that result is no longer interesting to neuroscientists. What remains at this point is to figure out a mechanism behind that result. So the line of inquiry…

I recently came across a link to this book, which I have not yet been able to read: http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Storm-Flaws-Science-Differences/...

Published just a few years ago, it criticizes much of the research on sex differences, and from the reviews it makes a very exhaustive and compelling case. I'm curious if these are some of the studies it criticizes.

(I don't have an opinion on this either way as I have not been able to examine the evidence. But I'm very interested to see that there is so much controversy, even among scientists, on this issue).