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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

#181

Post by whatshisface »

dsafklndl234 wrote: post #179
whatshisface wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No. Inheritance plays a larger role in becoming a successful CEO/"professional" than it would in hunting a lion. The biggest lie Americans tell themselves is that the wealthy got wealthy by "taking risks" and that they deserve their wealth. What takes more risk: having large amounts of capital accumulate wealth over time due or switching between multiple jobs, working longer hours, and being more stressed as you try…

The second might be more stressful, but the first is more risky - you risk capital to make money, but getting paid is a direct exchange of hours for dollars.

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

#182

Post by pwm »

lostjohnny wrote: post #162
ivanhoe wrote: post #159

IMHO a big part of "controversy" surrounding the idea of purely biological male vs. female predispositions comes from people not really understanding how statistics work. People feel that results like this are somehow limiting to them individually so they argue emotionally against it, but statistics don't really deal with the individual outcomes. Statistical researches are never about you, me or any single individual…

And yet... I've read this[1] yesterday on a complete unrelated topic, and I must say that "I don't buy" it's another form of not understanding statistics. Biology is what it is and controls major aspects of our lives. If you can be stronger of some of the biological instincts, good, but statistically biology always wins. We can say for example that "women prefer laudanum, men prefer opium and pronstitues" is 100% a s…

Just a funny aside if you allow me: gender pronouns are imho a great example of how seemingly trivial design choices can have a ripple effect on systems behaviour. What I mean by that is my mother tongue have no such concept as gender pronouns! It's not a thing. This whole problem that people spend enormous amounts of energy discussing on various social platforms like twitter simply does not exist. I find this rather amusing.

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

#183

Post by dekhn »

Hitton wrote: post #171
Craighead wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use JP as a reliable source. He is extremely subjective and pushes many ideologies in his "non fiction" takes.

He is professor of psychology who taught in top universities, his scientific articles have many citations, why wouldn't he be reliable? As far as I'm concerned he is as reliable as whole field of psychology - there can be multiple competitive theories, but you can't reject his just because you happen to not like them.

As a counterpoint, consider Peter Duesberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg), a world expert on viruses, who denies that the virus HIV causes AIDS. The reason we can reject this claim is that (unlike his previous work) it's totally unsupported by any evidence, counter to high quality evidence from large numbers of mainstream science.

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

#184

Post by bildung »

eej2ya1K wrote: post #174
bildung wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peterson is a particularly problematic source because he usually doesn't correctly declare where the science stops and his personal musings start. The Big Five in your quote are a perfect example: They have a significant heritable component, but for all factors heritability ranges from 40 to 60%, meaning 60% to 40% are explained by environment.[0] Yet when listening to Peterson somehow the environmental factor doesn'…

You are either lying about Peterson, or you just haven't listened to him properly. He brings up heritability ranges all the time and he also explains why a seemingly smallish difference between preferences by gender can have surprisingly large effects.

I've both actually studied the topic so know what this is all about, and watched dozens of hours of content from Peterson. His 101-like lectures (e.g. his 2014 personality lectures in his YT channel) are pretty good, both content-wise and from an educational standpoint. He certainly is a really good orator. I whish I had more psychology professors like him.

But just listen carefully to his more political talks. I sadly can't find it right now, but there was a mythical lecture about different cultures all having a variant of a tree of life. He simply lists a few cultures and then states that this list obviously can't be coincidence, ergo god exists.

He also routinely phrases things like "people high on consciencousness tend to be more conservative" in his public appearences. Which is true! The problem is in the context and the way he says it implies causation where there is no proof of any. Same thing for the gender differences.

Unrelated, but I personally really dislike his strawman arguments like his stance that postmodernism equals leftism, then criticising postmodernist theory. Practically all leftist/materialist theorists are directly opposed to postmodernists. There have been decades of bitter ivory tower battles between both factions.

Mind you I have no axe to grind here. I actually feel really sorry for the things the social media mob did to him. Just from watching his videos you can really see how bitter that experience made him in just a few months. The tragic thing is that in that original 2016 incidence, he actually was right! It really is futile to try to fight human tendency to categorize by changing the language for the categories. And there there is abundent evidence for that. (Amusingly the idea of changing reality trough language is actually a conservative one, represented by e.g. Heidegger.)

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

#185

Post by defertoreptar »

dekhn wrote: post #183
Hitton wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is professor of psychology who taught in top universities, his scientific articles have many citations, why wouldn't he be reliable? As far as I'm concerned he is as reliable as whole field of psychology - there can be multiple competitive theories, but you can't reject his just because you happen to not like them.

As a counterpoint, consider Peter Duesberg ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg ), a world expert on viruses, who denies that the virus HIV causes AIDS. The reason we can reject this claim is that (unlike his previous work) it's totally unsupported by any evidence, counter to high quality evidence from large numbers of mainstream science.

The way to make a counterpoint is not to bring up someone else and say "this other guy's claim is unsupported by evidence."

Instead, you'd do this by showing how Peterson's claim is unsupported by evidence, specifically on how his view pertains to the current topic.

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

#186

Post by dekhn »

defertoreptar wrote: post #185
dekhn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, consider Peter Duesberg ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg ), a world expert on viruses, who denies that the virus HIV causes AIDS. The reason we can reject this claim is that (unlike his previous work) it's totally unsupported by any evidence, counter to high quality evidence from large numbers of mainstream science.

The way to make a counterpoint is not to bring up someone else and say "this other guy's claim is unsupported by evidence." Instead, you'd do this by showing how Peterson's claim is unsupported by evidence, specifically on how his view pertains to the current topic.

My counterpoint is apt; it points out that even people who have credentials can be wrong, and it's important to consider that.

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

#187

Post by defertoreptar »

dekhn wrote: post #186
defertoreptar wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to make a counterpoint is not to bring up someone else and say "this other guy's claim is unsupported by evidence." Instead, you'd do this by showing how Peterson's claim is unsupported by evidence, specifically on how his view pertains to the current topic.

My counterpoint is apt; it points out that even people who have credentials can be wrong, and it's important to consider that.

Hitton's point is that "you can't reject [Peterson] just because you happen to not like them." If it was instead "because his claims are unsupported by evidence," then I could see how your counterpoint is apt. However, that is not the case.

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

#188

Post by dekhn »

defertoreptar wrote: post #187
dekhn wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My counterpoint is apt; it points out that even people who have credentials can be wrong, and it's important to consider that.

Hitton's point is that "you can't reject [Peterson] just because you happen to not like them." If it was instead "because his claims are unsupported by evidence," then I could see how your counterpoint is apt. However, that is not the case.

I was responding to "He is professor of psychology who taught in top universities, his scientific articles have many citations, why wouldn't he be reliable?", not "because his claims are unsupported by evidence".

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

#189

Post by lostjohnny »

dekhn wrote: post #183
Hitton wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is professor of psychology who taught in top universities, his scientific articles have many citations, why wouldn't he be reliable? As far as I'm concerned he is as reliable as whole field of psychology - there can be multiple competitive theories, but you can't reject his just because you happen to not like them.

As a counterpoint, consider Peter Duesberg ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg ), a world expert on viruses, who denies that the virus HIV causes AIDS. The reason we can reject this claim is that (unlike his previous work) it's totally unsupported by any evidence, counter to high quality evidence from large numbers of mainstream science.

> who denies that the virus HIV causes AIDS

That's understandable.

He supported an alternative theory.

But he was already 50 years years old when he published his first essay on HIV, and over 60 when he started the campaign against HIV/AIDS correlation.

And most of his theories have been disproved by following studies, his first publication on the subject is date 1987, Montagnier discovered HIV in 1986 and it was taken for granted as a fact years later.

The best moments of Duesberg career had already gone (like 30 years before).

Montagnier himself late in his life, at the age of 77, gave a speech that basically supported the validity of homeopathy.

I bet it's more an aging related problem than a credibility problem.

BTW Duesberg was wrong on HIV but not on the other topics he studied.

I have no reason of doubting your warnings on Peterson, but it may be possible, as in the Duesberg and Montagnier cases that he might be wrong on something and right on something else.

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

#190

Post by lostjohnny »

pwm wrote: post #182
lostjohnny wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet... I've read this[1] yesterday on a complete unrelated topic, and I must say that "I don't buy" it's another form of not understanding statistics. Biology is what it is and controls major aspects of our lives. If you can be stronger of some of the biological instincts, good, but statistically biology always wins. We can say for example that "women prefer laudanum, men prefer opium and pronstitues" is 100% a s…

Just a funny aside if you allow me: gender pronouns are imho a great example of how seemingly trivial design choices can have a ripple effect on systems behaviour. What I mean by that is my mother tongue have no such concept as gender pronouns! It's not a thing. This whole problem that people spend enormous amounts of energy discussing on various social platforms like twitter simply does not exist. I find this rather…

that's spot on.

I had the same conversation trying to explain that in Italian there are "male" things that have "female" names and vice versa.

For example "car" (automobile in Italian) or bulldozer (ruspa in Italian) are feminine nouns.

If you lookup those words in an Italian dictionary you'll find

    ruspa
    [rù-spa] s.f.
that s.f. means singular feminine.

We don't associate the fact the bulldozer has a feminine name with the notion that women are bulldozers.

At least, I don't!

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