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No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

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Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#211

Post by kerkeslager »

homonculus1 wrote: post #209
kerkeslager wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nature versus nurture is such a boring debate, honestly. The driving force behind the nature versus nurture debate seems to be people attempting to use science to justify their positions on pop philosophy, but the science rarely actually connects to the pop philosophy position. It's basically: take a specific scientific fact, try to use it to prove a very nonspecific idea (nature or nurture?) and then use that nonspe…

>(we know that current rehabilitation methods work well for some crimes and not for others) Somewhat off-topic but I find this interesting, can you elaborate on which ones we know this for?

I don't have anything resembling a full list, but rehabilitation seems to be effective for drug-related crimes[1]. I was going to say that sex offenders seem resistant to rehabilitation, but apparently that is no longer the case[2] (good news!). The cited meta-analysis of studies from 1995-2002 found little-no benefit from rehabilitation then, but the 2015 meta-analysis I linked shows rehabilitation to have "proven" or at least "promising" results--this is probably due to progress in rehabilitation methods.

It's widely believed that serial killers can't be rehabilitated, but as far as I can tell there really isn't data to back that up (most of them stay in jail forever, so we don't have recidivism data). So I don't think we can add serial killers to the list of non-rehabilitatable (sp?) crimes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism#Drug-related_crime

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25575803

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#212

Post by BurningFrog »

collyw wrote: post #172
BurningFrog wrote: post #127

Another victim in the "replication crisis" bloodbath for psychology. Personally, I'm probably going to wait 5 years before I believe any psychology science claim. Especially if it confirms something I already believe in :)

What is the rate of failure for "harder" sciences, does anyone know? In saying that I think there will be a self correcting mechanism in more physically based science. If something can be replicated it can be built upon and new discoveries made. If something can't be replicated it will end up being forgotten about. Also I do think that science needs a way of reporting failed studies and failed replication. At the mom…

Pretty sure dead and unconscious things are way easier to do objective science on.

Psychology must be one of the hardest disciplines to design experiments for.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#213

Post by seph-reed »

perl4ever wrote: post #93
seph-reed wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the antithesis of an expert in this. If someone has better information, I'm sure you'll let me know. What I've picked up thus far as the consistent physical differences between male and female brains are: 1. Dominant synapse connection direction. Males typically have more front to back connections than side to side. This may explain why females typically are better at multi-tasking, and males are typically more f…

"Also, twins boys have a significantly greater likelihood of homosexuality (less testosterone to go around)." Is the theory that male homosexual=less testosterone really more accepted than male homosexual=more testosterone? I feel like the latter has been argued extensively.

I did a project on theories behind sexual attraction about 12 years ago for my anthropology class.

I'm pretty sure the testosterone bit had more to do with the mother than the children.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#214

Post by gerbilly »

weberc2 wrote: post #205
gerbilly wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a kind HN received wisdom that all psychology studies are false or invalid. Personally, I see this blanket dismissal as one of the blind spots of our otherwise intelligent community. Perhaps because so many of us are engineers, and that it strokes our egos to see the softer sciences fail?

Dismissal ("that's not true") is different than skepticism ("I can't trust this to be true"). You're "ego" quip is not very charitable of this community--a more likely and more charitable interpretation is that people don't trust the fields that fail to reproduce, especially those fields that appear to be more interested in advancing an agenda than research (e.g., all of the drama around the implicit association test…

> You're "ego" quip is not very charitable of this community

And the blanket dismissal often posted here in a knee jerk reaction isn't very charitable to a whole body of research, that is arguably harder to operationalize than the hard sciences.

I'd prefer a more substantial discussion of the findings or paper at hand rather than to just bring up the replication crisis anytime any psychological finding is mentioned on HN.

I think many people on HN, myself included, are kind of addicted to appearing clever.

This tends to produce responses that earn us clever points with the least effort possible.

We've heard about the replication crisis a thousand times, we've heard about the Gell Mann effect. Neither of these alone constitute a substantive argument against a particular scientific paper or piece of journalism.

I'm waiting for someone to write a bot to post Gell Mann and Replication Crisis replies to every newspaper article or psychology paper. Maybe someone already has...

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#216

Post by justnotworthit »

BurningFrog wrote: post #127

Another victim in the "replication crisis" bloodbath for psychology. Personally, I'm probably going to wait 5 years before I believe any psychology science claim. Especially if it confirms something I already believe in :)

Wait, you did or you didn't believe this paper's psychology science claim? Why or why not? If we/you apply your criteria to other findings, will we find the good science?

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#217

Post by weberc2 »

gerbilly wrote: post #214
weberc2 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dismissal ("that's not true") is different than skepticism ("I can't trust this to be true"). You're "ego" quip is not very charitable of this community--a more likely and more charitable interpretation is that people don't trust the fields that fail to reproduce, especially those fields that appear to be more interested in advancing an agenda than research (e.g., all of the drama around the implicit association test…

> You're "ego" quip is not very charitable of this community And the blanket dismissal often posted here in a knee jerk reaction isn't very charitable to a whole body of research, that is arguably harder to operationalize than the hard sciences. I'd prefer a more substantial discussion of the findings or paper at hand rather than to just bring up the replication crisis anytime any psychological finding is mentioned o…

> And the blanket dismissal often posted here in a knee jerk reaction isn't very charitable to a whole body of research, that is arguably harder to operationalize than the hard sciences.

Credibility doesn’t depend on the relative difficulty of proving out truth claims. We don’t owe Psychology or Sociology blind faith because their claims are (arguably) more difficult to confirm than harder sciences.

You may well be bored of hearing about the replication crisis—you’re entitled to your opinion, but the low quality of the field of psychology is pretty relevant to the topic.

> I think many people on HN, myself included, are kind of addicted to appearing clever.

Apparently so are psychologists :) (kidding, I have lots of respect for psychologists and other researchers even if the fields themselves are prone to drawing bad conclusions)

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#218

Post by TheOperator »

zwkrt wrote: post #76
sverona wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trans woman here. I agree that the neuroscience feels kind of flimsy. I would further argue that neuroscience shouldn't be used as an argument in favor of "accept trans women as being women" because, among other things, it can just as quickly be turned around by people who seek to pull the You're Not Really Trans Unless A Doctor Says So card on other trans folks. We're women because we say we are - and that's really…

> Amazingly, it turns out that in a vacuum, the activity of programming a computer isn't actually gendered. Also mirrored by the fact that other cultures do not experience this issue so acutely.

A culture having "less issues with this" seems to be strongly associated with that culture having conservative views and more socioeconomic issues. I see more women programmers coming out of conservative poor Asian countries than progressive wealthy Nordic countries. I get the impression women are pushed into programming for reasons of economic stress or incentives in countries where less of a programming gender gap exists. To me if a country having less of a gender gap in programming implies either sexism or economic stress.

You can really interpret the prevalence of trans women in programming as being related to nurture or nature. The data point in a vacuum doesn't obviously point to either conclusion.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#219

Post by brigandish »

wsc981 wrote: post #167
another-one-off wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to think of any aspects of masculinity that I could safely class as 'healthy' in the current climate. For example, traditionally the view that males should be providers for the family would have been considered a healthy aspect of masculinity. That doesn't go unchallenged any more; for example there is a real concern out there that men are too competitive and effective at securing high paid jobs. It is…

> For example, traditionally the view that males should be providers for the family would have been considered a healthy aspect of masculinity. That doesn't go unchallenged any more; for example there is a real concern out there that men are too competitive and effective at securing high paid jobs. I wonder if people in Asia and Africa feel the same. Or perhaps even in South-America. To me it seems to be mostly a "We…

Which is also interesting because of the "third" sex, the large number of katoeys (ladyboys) in the country. The last time I was there, there was a big demonstration to support and legally recognise them (a laudable aim). It seems Thai expression of sexuality and gender doesn't rely on a denigration of masculinity, which personally, I take as a clue to the legitimacy of efforts to do so in the Anglosphere.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#220

Post by brigandish »

krapp wrote: post #190
tomp wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a typical "motte and bailey" conversational strategy. The reality is, proponents of the idea of "toxic masculinity" provide almost no examples of "healthy masculinity" (or "toxic femininity").

>The reality is, proponents of the idea of "toxic masculinity" provide almost no examples of "healthy masculinity" (or "toxic femininity"). Almost any article you read about toxic masculinity and in every discussion where it comes up, proponents take pains to point out, often in laborious detail, and to futile effect, that the term isn't meant to assign toxicity to all masculine behaviors. One shouldn't need to provi…

It would have made for a more persuasive rebuttal if you'd also included an example of non-toxic masculinity, don't you think?

Just one would do.

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