Note: First Woman Michele Obama confirms my suspicion
Added: Proof
Who is smarter, men or women?
Any college teacher (at least in the social sciences and life sciences) who has ever paid attention to their own stats know that women do better than men in college classes.
OK, women are smarter. But why?
There are all kinds of post hoc explanations given for this like “Girls get better grades because professors are men, nod nod wink wink” and so on. What a load of crap. Women are smarter than men on average, among the smartest people there is no emperical evidence that women are underrepresented, and among the dumbest people in the world …. well, those are mostly guys.
The reasons are obvious and straight forward. The hormones that give some men an evolutionary advantage over some other men also make you stoopid. Any questions? Ask a girl, she’ll explain it to you.
And now, finally (or shall I say, “once again”) there’s proof:
Female students are ahead of men in almost every measure of UK university achievement, according to a report from higher education researchers.
A Higher Education Policy Institute report shows that women are more likely to get places in the top universities and go on to get better grades.
Women also outnumber men in high status subjects, such as law and medicine.
UPDATE: This interesting piece appeared the other day in the New York Times: Girls Lead in Science Exam, but Not in the United States . A graphic from that piece is now the featured image for this post (above). So there you go.
So, there you go. Comments?
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Is that because the organs that dangle in wrinkly, little sacs between men’s legs release stupifying chemicals into the bloodstream? I’m pretty there’s a common, minimally invasive operation that can mitigate the problem, but you might have to go to a veterinarian to have it done. Still – a low price for higher intelligence.
Good idea. The question is when does it need to be done. The testes release andorynizing substances in utero. That may not affect intelligence.
Also, guys would just have to stop hanging around with other guys for a generation because some of this is pure cultural transmission.
Really? More women are getting higher achievements in school, so they must be smarter? So a hundred years ago men were more intelligent than women?
Seriously, what would the reaction be if the exact same results were found in another country, only it was men who were ahead? Something about the patriarchy keeping down, I bet.
Frankly, I would dismiss them both as saying nothing except who’s doing well in school, which may correlate with intelligence, but is nothing like a sure indicator.
Yeah, to what degree does performance correlate to intelligence? Good question. To what degree do cultural factors come into play? Also important to take into account. The most comprehensive studies show not only that men are overrepresented at the highest levels of academia (an indicator of performance, AND perhaps culture), but that a similar proportion of male subjects appear along the same uppermost tier on IQ measurements (the best indicator of general intelligence that we have). The way that RACE lines up on these figures is even more problematic, politically speaking.
But these are at the extremes. Men are also overrepresented at the other end. There are more idiot guys that daft ladies. As for the VAST intermediate into which most people fall, we find no reason reject what Greg says about the average woman having some advantage over men, and the evidence leads us to most strongly consider the effect of cultural, not genetic, factors here.
Here’s a pretty good rundown from Commentary magazine of a book that deals with the implications of these results:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-iq-controversy–by-mark-snyderman-and-stanley-rothman-7538
I’ve got no problem with a cheeky title like the one Greg attached to this post. For all kinds of reasons I find it handy to deploy phrases like “Women are smarter…” all the time.
Their ass doesn’t look fat in those jeans, either.
Bullshit. Greg, you are an utter anti-male bigot and blathering idiot. Now, most women may indeed be smarter than you, but that doesn’t give you the right to speak for all men. You’re just searching for evidence to reinforce your own biases. There’s no empirical evidence for women being smarter than men on average. Your use of university achievement as a measure of intelligence is laughable, which would be clearly evident were it used in another context, oh say, showing whites more intelligent than blacks.
Women are not smarter. Clues to what is really going on is given in the story you linked:
1> There are also still some subject areas, such as courses related to maths, physics and technology, where men are in the majority.
2> However male students still maintain a narrow lead in firsts – 13.9% to 13% of those who graduate.
3> The introduction of GCSEs in the late 1980s coincided with the time that girls began to overtake boys in academic achievement.
4> A science test taken by 11 and 12-year-olds in the mid-1970s had been successfully passed by 54% of boys and 27% of girls. When the same test was taken in 2003, the scores for both boys and girls had fallen to 17% – a much more rapid decline for boys.
Okay, what does all this mean? It means the following: during the 1970s, there was a push for “girl-centred education”, premised on the assumption that the curriculum discriminated against girls. Maths and science were dumbed down in the new GCSE exams. Exams themselves were given less weight, in favour of coursework. In the study of literature, female-centred fiction was brought to the fore (more Pride and Prejudice, less Gulliver’s Travels). These changes came about because it had been observed that boys do better at exams (relative to coursework), and do better at objective exams (as opposed to essays), and are better at mathematics and science, especially when it is tested rigorously, and because it was believed (reasonably) that “boy’s own” stories alienating to girls. Result: (a) girls “outperform” boys, (b) boys become demotivated, (c) science and engineering departments at universities cannot recruit good students, because no-one has an adequate background any more, (d) science and engineering departments actually start closing. However, notice that despite all this, more boys than girls get first class degrees — giving the lie to the tale that girls are smarter.
Touched a nerve did I?
Women also outnumber men in high status subjects, such as law and medicine.
Hey guys, Wanna get laid?
Give up that construction gig! Become a nurse!
How counter-intuitive is that?
Crap, Greg, I think you might wanna just SPELL IT OUT next time, OK??
And here’s the inexplicable thing about girls: they like us. I mean really. They like us. They are all soft and bumpy and shit and they like us.
Go figure.
“Touched a nerve did I?”
Actually, though you were clearly trying to get a reaction, most of us either said something like ‘Meh, yeah probably’ and others just calmly explained why such intelligence measures are pretty useless. Failed troll post.
“Touched a nerve did I?”
What do you mean by that? Your inference that women are smarter than men is just dumb and ignorant. Maybe women are smarter than you, but they are provably not smarter than men as a whole. There is ample evidence (from the standardization of tests) that women are not smarter than men overall, and that the very brightest individuals, especially in areas that require abstract reasoning, are mostly men. Unsurprisingly, at the highest level of attainment, men surpass women in most disciplines, and in the more technical fields (e.g., mathematics, science, engineering, economics), where being smart really matters and is objectively measurable, men overwhelmingly predominate.
The high proportion of women passing the low-to-moderate thresholds required for admission to univerisity is entirely consistent with women being no smarter than men (or perhaps even slightly dumber), but working more steadily during adolescence. The lower the threshold, the greater should be the proportion of girls surpassing it, because variance in ability is greater among boys than among girls. However, if the bar is set high enough, a point will be reached where the boys outperform the girls, due to the same wide variance.
The pattern of girls working more steadily than boys in adolescence tends to reverse during adulthood, with women seeking “work-life balance” and valuing family above career, while men put all their energy into achievement at work. Hence, girls who seemed promising at school and university achieve little in their careers, while boys who seemed to have serious problems at school actually turn out stellar performance in their post-education careers. This pattern is well-attested, and is discussed by Susan Pinker in “The Sexual Paradox”.
The sexes have different sets of talents. It should not surprise anyone that girls would rush into medicine and do well in that field (caring profession), or law (verbal skills highly valued). However, girls avoid fields where the highest levels of visual, numerical and abstract reasoning are demanded, and most fail to thrive in those fields if they enter them.
Girl-centred education is a public policy fact, and it constitutes a serious dumbing down of the education system. The predictable effect on boys is less important than the equally predictable overall effect on the economy: All countries that have adopted it will, over time, find their economies deeper in the shitter, because they are lagging behind in technology and science. This process seems already to have begun (e.g., several university science departments have shut down due to inability to recruit students, as I mentioned earlier.) Another problem is that, women are major slackers at work. The state-run National Health Service in Britain is suffering from accelerating doctor shortages. Reason: female doctors are much more likely than male doctors to opt for part-time work. If all medical doctors were women, as opposed to all men, about 50% more would have to be trained in order ensure the same level of service.
Incidentally, there is strong evidence of widespread discrimination in favour of women in the labour market in the UK (women are anything from twice to four times as likely to be invited to interview as men with the same CV, in most occupations studied – Riach & Rich 2006). I wouldn’t be surprised if the same process was in operation in higher education.
I wrote:
“The lower the threshold, the greater should be the proportion of girls surpassing it, because variance in ability is greater among boys than among girls. However, if the bar is set high enough, a point will be reached where the boys outperform the girls, due to the same wide variance.”
The statistic in the report on which the news story is based bear this out: the lower the status of the institution, the higher the proportion of women to men, but when we get to Oxford and Cambridge, the proportion of women to men becomes equal. Similarly, more women than men obtain middling degrees, but more men than women obtain first class degrees.
This is just an anecdote, but in my experience, I have felt like I have to do better to be considered the same as men who do the same thing. I have felt the pressure in school to just be so good that no one can deny my achievements. I have also felt that I can’t mess up because it would reflect badly on women as a group. I think this describes it well:
http://xkcd.com/385/
Greg, the “emperical” (sic) evidence, as you have seen in the comments above, is wholly against your wishful-thinking view of the world–just as it was less than a week ago, when you were equally titillated by Sharon Begley’s presentation of Janet Hyde’s shoddy attempts at research on a closely related topic (debunked here).
Real scientists do their best to impartially follow the evidence–they do not react to unwelcome and thoroughly damning evidence against their cherished beliefs by invoking pop psych and childishly saying, “Touched a nerve did I?”
This is supposedly a science blog–at least that’s what the URL would suggest.
So are you a scientist or a mouse, Greg? If the former, start following the evidence, even when it’s not what you’d like to hear. If you can’t do that, maybe switch your posts to religionblogs.com or something. Because the way it looks right now is that you’re as much of a True Believer in what you need (psychologically) to hear, as the evidence-free religious believers whom your “Scarlet A” is meant to push back against, are.
Thanks for the introduction to Garfunkel & Oates, though. Those chicks rock!
@catgirl: “I have felt like I have to do better to be considered the same as men who do the same thing.”
Madame Curie probably felt the same pressures. How did she react to them?
There are all kinds of post hoc explanations given for this like “Girls get better grades because professors are men, nod nod wink wink” and so on. What a load of crap.
Oh, that reminded me: A very bright and witty young woman I occasionally bump into at a local bar, and who was otherwise doing very well in her English-major courses, told me a couple of months ago that she was only pulling a 20 (percent) in her required science course of astronomy.
The relevance being, not that women can’t do astronomy, but rather that the elderly male prof offered to bump her up to an “A” … if she’d “bump and grind” with him.
So it ain’t all crap, Greg. It does go on.
Plus, it’s “nudge nudge, wink wink,” isn’t it? You’re really not having a good week, are you?
Thanks for the anecdote. In case you aren’t aware, grade curves are pretty much standard in scientific and engineering classes, at least at good universities. In one of my classes, my teacher was surprised that the class average on a quiz was better than 50%. Also, I knew several students (mostly men because most of my class was men) who had an average of less than 50% in a class (even as low as 30% in one case) who did extremely well on the final exam and got an A for course. Of course I don’t know anything about what happened to “your friend”, but if a teacher did actually suggest that, she should have reported him to the dean, at minimum. Still, having a very low average and ending up with a good grade is not that surprising and doesn’t necessarily require sexual favors.
Apparently several of the commenters (e.g. Bruce) appear to have missed the irony when discussing the cultural contexts here. Or else these posts just attract a lot of sexist idiots.
I wonder what percentage of middle and high school teachers are women. I’d expect women to better at teaching girls than at teaching boys, regardless of intent. Perhaps they would have done better at teaching girls all along, except for funding disparities or administrative bias?
I (XY chromosomes) did very well in school with female teachers, but I’m transgender and don’t relate to most males at all. I look at a female teacher and feel as if some part of me is standing up there at the chalkboard – if I don’t listen I’ll be walking around without that part.
We are actually studying how best to teach girls, also. We’re not studying how best to teach boys.
And what is intelligence? Are we talking IQ, or Gardner’s multiple intelligences? Everyone in the psych field seems loath to ascribe any credence whatsoever to test scores or even the concept of intelligence.
i think women and men are both intellegent. Its just there attiude. Do they want to show that there smart or not. Some woman dont want to show that they r smart b/c there boy friends feel stupid and they come plain about that. Some guys just r just plane nice and say ur right no matter what to there wife or whatever even though he nos that she is rong the answer is rong. so i think both woman and man r intellegent. They just have problems showing it.
Last night I watched my neighbors boyfriend bashing another guy in the street. Cops called, bad boy ran of, good boy ‘got the girl’
Funny thing is, she was encouraged all her life to become educated, and the guy she chose as her ‘man’ is patently ‘not educated’ and even anti-education in the sense that he scoffs at good conversation and intellectual banter.
Funnier thing is to watch how she manipulated him into the violence ( long story) with her male-on-male violence approving gazes, her laughter every time her ‘man’ called the other guy a faggot, etc., and her ‘need for protection from bad men’.
Funniest thing is that she might be pregnant,and will no doubt perpetuate male-on-male violence through her approval and encouragement of it. Oh, yeah, she was raised by a single mom, too.
I imagine violence can hinder intellectual development in males.
why would you even say such a stupid thing if you say that your over looking thousands of years you stupid shit men invented everything like music art technology and dont give me this crap about women not being equal because equality does not affect one’s creativity and by comparing men in colleges is just down right stupid because men score higher in i.q tests and if you belive this greg guy is actually a guy your just stupid its a woman the reason she didn’t want to put a women’s name is because ppl would think she’s being biased
I don’t know whether it’s serious, but it’s the funniest thing I’ve seen today.
what the fuck is it with the txtspk, paragraph-length run-in sentences, and other examples of illiteracy in this thread?
and also, what was the point of this non-sequitur: “Oh, yeah, she was raised by a single mom, too.”. what does that have to do with the rest of the anecdote?
Ok I’m just going to put some names out there:
Albert Einstein
Thomas Edison
The Wright BROTHERS
Stephen Hawking
Benjamin Franklin
Aristotle
Archemedes
Plato
Leonardo Da Vinci
Just something to think about before posting.
Oh and I’d also like to say, have you seen teenage girls today? really smart next generation for women.
Gosh, Sean, thanks for the comprehensive list of historical smart people. And have you seen teenage boys today?
Sean, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that you have a true Super Power. Thanks for showing it off here, and for letting me know what I should check into next time I blog about something.
The bad news is that your superpower is BEING A MORON!!!!
Oh, and yes, I’ve seen teenage girls today. I’ve got one, my daughter. In her sleep she could think circles around you on your best day.
You should check out the works and writings of these women:
Barbara McClintock
Angelica Cauffman
Ayn Rand
Marie Curie
Marietta Robusti Tintoretto
Mary Leakey
Rachel Carson
Suzanne de Court
Clara Barton
Elizabeth Kubler Ross
Getturde Belle Elion
Jane Goodall
Johann Zoffany
Alison Brooks
Elisabeth Blackwell
Margaret Sanger
Maria Mayer
Judith Leyster
Margaret Mead
OH NOES!!!11!1!! My Penis is in Jeopardy and I am Just Not A Man, if Wyminz iz Smarter than Me!!!!
(I don’t know what to do about my girlfriend and partner being rather cleverer than I – I am so very emasculated by it all…Since I was told by Steph, that it can’t be taken away at her blog, I suppose I’ll just have to forfeit my man credentials here.)
It’s interesting, indeed, how touchy a subject like this is. I am female, and I will admit that I would like some compensation. What I mean by that is, it’s obvious that men are physiologically stronger than women. Well, since that’s the case, I would like to think that my gender is compensated with a higher intellect. But, if that’s not the case, then so be it. That still doesn’t make men superior or better than women. In some research, it is “de facto” that plays a large part in the I.Q. test results. Some believe that women downplay their scores while men over-exaggerate, if you will, their scores by roughly five points. And what I mean by “de facto” is, by the mind of the people. For centuries the idea that men are superior to women has been ingrained in our minds. Once Womens’ Suffrage came about, women finally began to realize and make a stand towards equality. Now, the law has catered to this, and possibly a bit too much with “girl-centered teaching”; but while the law catered to women having their own pay checks as well as equal pay as men, the idea still stands in our minds that because men are stronger than women, they are better.
Men have been taught to never hit a girl and to protect women. In return for this chance at survival behind a man (because, of course a woman can’t make it on her own), the woman would give thanks to the man by taking care of him. This turned into the man taking care of the household with a paycheck from a job that was much too rigorous for a woman, and the woman thanking the man by taking care of his children (where her innate talents lay) and taking care of the house he finances.
Now, I am a black belt in martial arts; I know very well how to take care of myself. Also, my build is a stronger build than the average female. So, for a woman like me to be dainty, light, etc., is almost unnatural because I have a hard attitude as well as a hard physic.
And, overall, I believe in myself as strong and smart. I also believe that there are some women out there that have larger, stronger builds than some men, and some men who are prettier than some women. Now, the new stereotype is that these type of people MUST be homosexual, but that is not the case for everyone.
Now, I beg pardon for my tangent and I will end as such: everyone has different and special talents, right? So, leave me the hell alone if I want to smoke a cigar, eat beef jerkey, and shoot my 9 millimeter Sig Saur or my 10 millimeter Glock. And don’t anyone dare call a stright or gay man “feminine” because he cuts hair. I must state one last thing!
Whenever men are bullshitting together, they will insult each other by calling or insinuating that they are acting like women or being girly. I will not tolerate phrases like: “You throw like a girl!” “Now, quit crying like a bunch of girls and grow some balls!” Etc. To me, these phrases insinuate that the “girly” way of doing things is weak or incorrect. Not at all the case! Just different.
No lol , females are not smarter than males , actually males have higher intelligence on average from 16 to adultness , that’s mean teen boys have slightly higher iq than teen girls , and adult men have higher iq than women
( based on iq test ) , you’re little bit too much biased here , most of women think they’re smarter is sad and funny at the same time .
there’s so many proofs shows intelligence avantage in males but men still saying both genders are equal .
Women stilll think they have advantage over males is so idiotic
I can take it if you said both genders are equal , but women are little bit narcissistic most of the time
keep saying shi-t.. cuz i believe no body will take your comment seriously
Note : Male born with more neurones and 7 times more gray matter in intelligence braine cortexes
Let me end this … our gender born with higher speed/strength and higher Intellect on average , and women born with more endurance and flexibility on average .
Why does it matter who is smarter?
History has shown us many brilliant men and many brilliant women.
This argument can- and probably will- go on forever, but why?
If the whole world comes to a conclusion that men are smarter than women or vice versa, so what?
We’ve been living with sexism for ages, and we all seem to have survived thus far; what would change? What will arguing this case over and over and over for ever and ever and ever do for any one of us?
Nothing.
As if to underline what I wrote earlier, a recent policy change in Britain has resulted in a dramatic turnaround in exam results. Boys had been lagging behind girls in GCSE maths consistently for years. This year, it was belatedly realized basing assessment on coursework makes cheating easy, and cheating is in fact rife in GCSE coursework, so they switched to exam only mode. Immediately, boys’ results improved relative to those of girls, to the extent that they obtained better grades on average than girls.
Moral of the story: don’t try to infer the superiority or inferiority of one sex or the other from exam results until you understand how those exams are rigged.
And don’t go putting all your eggs in the test basket without knowing a little something about stereotype threat. Rigged indeed.
Men in general have more power than women, but not because of their great intelligence, as they would like to think of course. They were born with a greater stature and muscular structure and some use it to intimidate anything smaller than they are, i.e. women, children, animals: of course the easy targets.
Male children did not go to college to grow a penis – they were born with it. No choice in the matter and no grand accomplishment there either. But they rule the world like they are Dartmouth scholars because of it.
This has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence. In fact just the opposite. People who lack intellectual ability often resort to brawn.
Men were not born with a bigger or more active brain. In fact there are scientific and provable studies that male brains completely shut down when they go to sleep and female brains fire from both, not one but both, hemispheres continually.
However our society leads women to believe they should be at the mercy of a man because men must be smarter? Men just had the luck of the draw to be born bigger allowing them to be bullys.
ggg
It is also a fact that more women go to college… alot more… so its no surprise that on average they have higher grades than men and more get to higher places in the university… if you knew this then you’d realize the facts you gave don’t hold much weight. let it also be known that men on average do better on the SAT even though more women take it. moreover after a recient study, it was found that men, on average have an IQ 3.7 points higher that females. Thats quite an achievement being that there are profoundly more males with downs syndrome than females which are included in this study. But it was found that there is a huge amount of males with extremely high IQ’s (140 and above (with 100 being an average between all sexes) than females. Also, though this has nothing to do with intelligences but anatomy, mens’ brains are larger (100g av.) than females, but that’s just because men are larger period; just a fun fact for you. Another study was done where 100, 2 1/2 year old male and female toddlers were put in a room where dollar bills were dropped from the ceiling, they were told that they could keep any money they caught from the air but they were not allowed to pick it up from the floor. The average boy picked 3 dollars from the air, can you guess how many the girls got on average? they got zero. And on top of that 14% of the girls proceeded to pick them up off the floor during the test.
Maybe you should get your facts straight before you make unintelligent unsubstantial statements like you’ve done. But keep up the good fight! FYS.
These may be my favorite use of statistics ever, ever, ever. Yes, Uranidiot, if more women take the SAT because more women are college-bound, then one would expect that women’s average scores were going down because even less-prepared women are going to college, whereas the less-prepared men aren’t. So those less-prepared women are bringing down the average of the women–but they’re still smart enough to know they need college to make a decent living later.
This is also how one would expect your first point to work with more women in college. I’ll leave you to work out the implications of the fact that it doesn’t…if you can, Uranidiot.
In all seriousness who let the women out of the kitchen. Some man somewhere isn’t doing his job to keep her in line. smack smack
Jason Trubeck,
Andover, Minnesota
jason.trubeck88@gmail.com
Click the link to visit my MySpace Account
Umm, that would be you who are an idiot, Uranidiot. Stephanie was good enough to deal with the issue of SATs, I will happily deal with the rest. IQ is first and foremost not a reasonable measure of actual intelligence. There is a very good reason that most kids in U.S. American schools no longer take IQ tests as a matter of course. And the follow up to that, is the group of kids most likely to take an IQ test. The reason that boys score higher, is because significantly more boys take IQ tests. The reason being, most kids will take IQ tests as part of their placement in special education programs – something that tends to include far more boys than girls. And the reason that slants so much, is because unlike especially clever girls, especially clever boys tend to have a lot of problems in school.
As for your toddler example, that is not a reasonable test of intelligence, that is a test of fine motor skills. Very few 2.5 year olds have the slightest understanding of money – telling them they can keep it is not terribly meaningful to most of them. But if you are keen on placing some intelligence to that, it is a hell of a lot easier to pick something up off the floor, than it is to pick it out of the air.
Uran-Idiot, thanks for the spew of unattributed mostly bullshit links. Care to provide references?
There is no valid IQ study that includes geniuses, people with downs syndrome, and regular people in the same statistical pool. There is no way to do that. That is not how IQ works.
I taught an intro course in the sciences with ca 500 students about 35 times and every single time the females scored, on average, above the males. I have always had very high standards as to which students (ug and grad) I would work with, and very few men have passed those standards compared to the women. One year, I had two students meet the highest academic award given at the university, one male and one female, so I suppose that indicates some equivalence. But he was gay, of course. So maybe this whole thing should be adjusted: Straight men are relatively dumb.
the only reason why women are where they are now, is that the majority of them slept with their bosses and teachers to make it somewhere in this world. Let’s face it…women sleep with men in power. they offer sexual favors in exchange for power.
I agree with Uranidiot and wholetthewomenoutofthekitchen….women belong at home. THey were created to have children..so maybe they should start having children….Because women insist on being liberated the population of the world is decreasnig (except of course in 3rd world countries). In ITaly, the population has lessened since WW2 and in Russia it is the exact same. For Gods sakes women, get your asses married, have some children and cook mens’ meals because in the long run you will end up doing it anyways…its wat you were created to do…
Jason Trubeck,
Andover, Minnesota
jason.trubeck88@gmail.com
Click the link to visit my MySpace Account
Greg Laden, following your logic that straight men are dumb and guessing that you feel you are smart…you must be dick sucking faggot….
Jason Trubeck,
Andover, Minnesota
jason.trubeck88@gmail.com
Click the link to visit my MySpace Account
greg laden is a fucking faggot
Jason Trubeck,
Andover, Minnesota
jason.trubeck88@gmail.com
Click the link to visit my MySpace Account
who wants a mail order bride to bake cakes for you everyday.I know I do. The best part of mail order bride is they what their told!
Jason Trubeck,
Andover, Minnesota
jason.trubeck88@gmail.com
Click the link to visit my MySpace Account
I train my girlfriend….she does what i want when i want. she sucks my cock three times a day because she is a woman and less than I am..therefore she does as I wish…She is nothing without me..she is worthless.that is all women. worthless without men..
Greg you are a fag for writing this in your blog you are not a man…
IM HUNGRY BITCHES COOK FOR ME
Jason Trubeck,
Andover, Minnesota
jason.trubeck88@gmail.com
Click the link to visit my MySpace Account
stephanie z…y dont you suck my cock baby…thats all your worth anyways…cooking,cleaning, and fucking in that order
Jason Trubeck,
Andover, Minnesota
jason.trubeck88@gmail.com
Click the link to visit my MySpace Account
Wow. Someone really can’t handle being out-argued by a girl, can he?
* Physicist / Engineer Kim Ung-yong has a verified IQ of 210
* Bouncer Christopher Michael Langan has a verified IQ of 195
* Engineer Philip Emeagwali is alleged to have an IQ of 190
* World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov is alleged to have an IQ of 190
* Author Marilyn Vos Savant has a verified IQ of 186
* Actor James Woods is alleged to have an IQ of 180
* Politician John H. Sununu is alleged to have an IQ of 180
* Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is alleged to have an IQ of 180
* Mathematician Andrew Wiles is alleged to have an IQ of 170
* World Chess Champion Judith Polgar is alleged to have an IQ of 170
* Chess Grandmaster Robert Byrne is alleged to have an IQ of 170
* World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer is alleged to have an IQ of 167
* Mathematician / Physicist Stephen W. Hawking is alleged to have an IQ of over 160
* Microsoft Founder Paul Allen is alleged to have an IQ of over 160
* Physicist / Engineer Kim Ung-yong has a verified IQ of 210
* Bouncer Christopher Michael Langan has a verified IQ of 195
* Engineer Philip Emeagwali is alleged to have an IQ of 190
* World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov is alleged to have an IQ of 190
* Author Marilyn Vos Savant has a verified IQ of 186
* Actor James Woods is alleged to have an IQ of 180
* Politician John H. Sununu is alleged to have an IQ of 180
* Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is alleged to have an IQ of 180
* Mathematician Andrew Wiles is alleged to have an IQ of 170
* Chess Grandmaster Robert Byrne is alleged to have an IQ of 170
* World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer is alleged to have an IQ of 167
* Mathematician / Physicist Stephen W. Hawking is alleged to have an IQ of over 160
* Microsoft Founder Paul Allen is alleged to have an IQ of over 160
Yep, I must be dumb. Can anyone explain to me the point of posting a list of allegations about IQ, including two of women, with the tag “HmmNoWomen”? Twice?
stoopidity?
For all those who noticed the slew of offensive obnoxious comments a moment ago: Sorry about that. The spam filter has been updated and a note sent to the offender’s ISP.
I’m hungry so does any self liberated women want to make me a sandwich?
Jason Trubeck,
Andover, Minnesota
jason.trubeck88@gmail.com
Click the link to visit my MySpace Account
There isnâ??t something that IQ and intelligence tests can accurately measure. Different tests can give widely different numbers for the same individuals. In this paper they talk about how in some well-documented tests people with autism can have scores that are different by as much as 70 percentile points.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17680932
A test that canâ??t get an answer closer than 70 percentile points is useless.
Stephanie@41: obviously Judith and Marilyn are mens’ names. No women could possibly be that smart, so they MUST be men.
I still don’t get why idiots like the troll above seem to think that intelligence excludes being caring. My husband is very intelligent, yet he frequently cooks food for me and rubs any sore muscles of mine. The same applies to me – I happily cook for him and give him backrubs. I thought a relationship was supposed to be about giving each other equally with whatever one can (as well as sharing and trust and so on). We just happen to be able to give each other almost the same things – especially since we’re both geeks and comp sci students who enjoy nice home-cooked food.
I wonder about neuronal pruning in the first year, environmental shaping, and autism. In my practice (speech-language pathologist), I see more and more upper middle class kids with a dx of autism. They may have been considered merely ‘eccentric’ in the past. They may be very bright on some level, know tons of information, but have trouble integrating it and seeing the big picture. They may be emotioanally infantile and have trouble getting through the day at school (where, admittedly, conformity is the name of the game). They may have difficulty managing sensory input, and may be overwhelmed by it. These children are often from upper m;iddle class families who have provided the best in intellectual input, nutrition, etc., for their child. {and of course, all their vaccinations:|) Could it be that the neuronal pruning didn’t happen as much as ‘necessary’? I remember something about these children having larger brains or larger head circumference. Do these things go together possible? Ideas?
as regards the concept of equality between the
We know that male attributes have a much wider variance than female attributes. There are many more men at the highest level of IQ, ability for spatial perception, aggression, competitiveness, ability to concieve of and create complex systems, desire to take risk, desire for high achievement, desire to dominante others and the environment etc., there are also more men at the bottom, BUT those who rule come from the high end not the low end. All of these impulses are biologically based even if they may be increased by social conditioning. Would women lock themselves in a room for a month and compose the â??Messiahâ?, or spend a tortured night on the beach discovering what we call Heisenbergâ??s Uncertainty Principle or sail into the dangerous and unknown Atlantic Ocean to discover a new world, or venture to the moon ,so on and so on?????
Of course not, Mother Nature wouldnâ??t stand for it for obvious reason(survival of the species).
Brain research over the last 30 years has begun to show how the male and female brain differ and why men have always played the role of creator and destroyer.
Although deep down in our genes men create the material culture to make themselves more desirerable to women, i.e., men compete, women choose. To expect the science department of a school like Harvard to have something even close to 50% women could only happen in an Orwellian world where standerds were lowered.
What also seems to be clear, from the record so far, is that women do not have the capacity to innovate. They bring great talents to developing what Thomas Kuhn called â??normal science,â? but they have no record of creating the â??paradigm shiftsâ? that lead in new directions. It may be, of course, that as the feminists sometimes claim, this is because they were never encouraged to engage in these activities. But to need encouragement, to depend on models to follow, is precisely not to have a capacity to innovate. It has been men who have invented things and found challenges in nature, such as climbing high mountains or sailing alone around the world. And once men have done it, women will also do it. These remain highly notable enterprises, well beyond the reach of all but a few men, but they also exemplify the fact that innovation remains largely the specialization of white males. Women can do marvellous things with a house, but they do need the house to be there in the first place.
Women & Govenrment
Its no accident that we had the blessing of Founding Fathers not Mothers. The most fundamental role of government, as reflected in the thinkers of the Enlightenment and in our constitution, is to PROTECT not to PROVIDE. That is, freedom is seen to be inherent in allowing people to choose and pursue, with as little constraints as reasonably possible, life, liberty and happiness. The more government concerns itself with providing rather than protecting the less freedom the individual has because the only way government can provide is to tax and the more it taxes the less the resources the individual citizen has to seek his own happiness. Hence everything a citizen earns is his and he and his fellow citizens decide through their elected officials how much they are willing to give to the government to PROTECT them. Socialists and their ilk take a diametrically opposite position. They think the role of government is to provide many of the necessities of life.They think,(although they woul d never admit it here in the USA) that everything a citizen makes is the governmentâ??s and the government decides how much you can keep! They are willing to live a much more limited life since the Faustian bargain they accept, consciously or unconsciously is to have very diminished financial resources but a guarantee of a mediocre existence.
This is the real rift between conservatives and liberals today. This is why women in general and single women in particular vote more Democratic than Republican. Unlike most men they prefer a guarantee of a modicum of safety and have little desire for the possibilities that can accrue when one is willing to take risk. Of course this is just what Mother Nature wants since to have it otherwise would be to the detriment of children which are the hope of future existence.
The problem is if society chooses to be provided for as opposed to being protected the consequences can and will eventually be dire. Hence Liberals ask for entitlements and every type of social welfare program and ignore or even abhor the need for national defense and lower taxes.
Alexis deâ??tocqueville saw this conundrum 200 years ago when he said the main problem with a democracy is that people will eventually see that they can vote themselves a welfare state, at the expense , of course , of the most productive citizens!
WHAT YOU ARE SAYING MEANS WOMEN ARE BETTER IN MEMORIZING AND REPEATING WHAT THEY ARE TOLD, THAT’S WHAT EDUCATION MEANS, I WANNA SEE A WOMAN MAKE A HUMAN OUT OF HER OWN CHILD …ON HER OWN!, WILL NEVER HAPPEN, MEN ARE MORE REALISTIC, WOMAN ARE MORE EMOTIONAL, SO THAT TAKES ME TO A QUESTION TO YOU, GREIG, HOW WISE DOES A WOMAN GET DURING PERIODS?!!?!?!? OR OTHER DISTURBANCES “UP THERE”, THERE IS ALSO ONE FACT……WOMANS LUNGS ARE 30 % LESS THEN MENS, THIS MEANS 30% LESS OXYGEN TO THE BRAIN!, I WONDER WHAT’S RESTRICTING YOUR OXYGEN FLOW?
BTW “STUPID” SPELLS EXACTLY LIKE THIS, NOT STOOPID, THAT’S HOW WOMEN ARE, AND YOU.
Well, hello, Bobby, and welcome to the outside world. While you’re out here, you should know that you want your Caps Lock light to be off while you’re trying to communicate with others, that sentences are punctuated with periods, and that if you want to mock someone for misspellings, it helps to get his name right.
Wanting to see a woman do something, however, we completely understand. Do be warned that once you’ve actually seen more than one or two women, your urges may get even more specific. Don’t be afraid. It’s perfectly natural.
The wiring on his keyboard, or somewhere, could be reversed.
I’m going with “or somewhere”.
Umm, Arthur – I would just like to point out that those at the high end of the IQ spectrum (which has been pointed out as being a rather shitty measure of intelligence) do not – I repeat, do not tend to get into positions of real power and authority. The closest they might come, is influencing real power. But real power is generally held by people who are average to slightly above average in terms of what IQ measures.
I would also like to point out that the reason we see so many men at the extremes of IQ, is because most of the people who take IQ tests these days are people who are going into special education programs – mostly males. That and because the majority of people who actually take IQ seriously are men – probably men with small peckers who really want to compensate and are afraid of large trucks…
So what then can we say of men who object to the use of IQ as the be all and end all of psychometrics?
Oh, I think we can safely say they have absolutely massive senses of humor.
No Stephanie, I compensate for my penis size with a massive ego, sorry to say…My sense of humor is possibly more stunted than my social skills…
Mm-hmm. And when are we invading Canada again?
Bahh! That doesn’t count – those fucking Canukistanians totally have it coming!!! Besides, I am too damned busy right now anyways – I am taking eighteen credits this semester. Canuckistan will have to wait – for the time being…
But no, ultimately I haven’t much in the way of a sense of humor – it is certainly not enough to be compensatory. My penis may be small, but it isn’t that small…My ego on the other hand…
Oh, and BOBBY!!!, you should note that men are not less emotional – we are just stunted in their ability to manage their emotional input in a healthy fashion. Indeed, we suck at it so badly that we are prone to serious health problems largely as a result of it.
This is a outright lie!
The male Y chromosome is constantly evolving, the Y chromosome is the fastest-changing part of the human genome and is constantly renewing itself. While the female chromosome is in a constant state of decay.
Just look at the stupid stuff women do everyday!
If you think i’n lying google it and do your own homework.
Niether gender is smarter. It is all about typical gender stereotyping. The rural town where i live it is very common to see a guy with an associates degree in specialized technology working as a welder, mechanic, construction, maintenance, ect making maybe $40,000 if he’s real lucky while his wife with an associates or bachelors degree in something like accounting, IT, billing, computers, nursing, etc making anywhere from $55,000 to $90,000 a year.
There is pressure amoung guys/boys from a young age to work in more “manly” fields, even though these jobs require a very high skill level they for the MOST part tend to pay very low wages for the ridiculous skill requirements (i know, i worked as a maintenence tech myself for the last 15 years) but they give you more respect among the other guys then say the guy that does office type professions that pay much higher. that’s why kids who are very smart in school tend to get picked on all the time while the girls are pretty much free to achieve thier goals.
Guys are pretty much brainwashed into being stupid. Guys have no one but themselves to blame for continueing to make life harder for themselves. After 15 years of working in dangerous conditions for baloney pay i have finally woken up and decided to go back to school to try to make a real living for myself.
I would like to know why men often believe they are better in mathematics and science. My 3 daughters are ALL in 7th grade (1 in 6th) and were invited by Duke University, the University of Florida,and MIT to take the MATH SAT. They are all three EXTREMELY intelligent and articulate girls. And are very proficient in math.
And to regard Arthur’s comment, your argument is illogical and inept. Who is to say women aren’t risk taker. Who is to say that we wouldn’t lock ourselves in our rooms to compose a staff of music. Who is to say we aren’t competitive. You state that feminists use the “we weren’t encouraged/we had little to no rights” argument to state why we didn’t do those things. It is because it is true. We were not allowed nor encouraged toward greater education. We were taught to raise children and take care of households. So the feminists’ arguments are valid.
And for you information, women are VERY big risk takers(Amelia Earhart anyone?). Do you have any idea how many women risked getting jailed/demeaned because they strove to succeed. Many,many,MANY women created musical compositions, aided in inventions,actually invented something (i.e the bulletproof vest, laser eye surgery, technograph etc)wrote books, created ways to do math (google female mathematicians and you’ll be surprised by the numerous amount of females who created ways to do math that we use everyday). And at that day and age, YES, it was a very big risk. many of those women disguised themselves as men. And that was all back then. Imagine what women are working on now in their laboratories, in the 21st century when women have equal rights. Incredible things I bet. And what in the world are you saying that women who do go in the mathematical field mostly fail? ABSURD! We do not “fail” in those fields, mind you, and there are many women in that field also, 48.3% of the mathematicians to be exact. I would know because my own sister is a very well accomplished mathematician in system-grid coordination.
And yes, back before the 1980’s women did value family over career. Guess what? not anymore. Women make 49.9 of the workforce as of August ’09. Men assume that women will never be the “first” to do something. That is wrong. Since basic knowledge of the world has been established, we can only build on it. Until we find something problematic in the world. And if we do no doubt there will be women being leaders in the projects. All you lists of intelligent men are true, however you left out MANY
And it wasn’t man that wanted to go to the moon. It was humanity.
I think in general men and women are of equal intellagence, but i also think that women are much more ignorant of things outside of what they have been taught. Thats why you find so many women that are very intelligent but not interested in a lot at all, men on the other hand (from my experiance) tend to be much more interested in the world around them and therefore appear to be more intelligent.
Like for example if you try to start a conversation on the second world war or the Russian revolution with a woman, they will often reply with; “thats boring” or “I’m not interested”, though many of them fail to see the fact that these two subjects are some of the most interesting things that mankind could possiblly be interested in! Again that is not to say that they are dumb. There is just an idea that exists in the human race that women should be interested in gardening and cooking and stuff like that, and so as a result many women find it quite uncomfortable to get into subjects that are normally considered mens interests, like war and politics.
Will, it is possible that women on average are simply interested in a set of topics other than those that you happen to be interested in. I read a book on the evolution of dinosaurs and everything I told my wife about it she was very interested in. I read a book about the anglo boer war and almost nothing in it was interested to her.
Good that that there are so many different events of great importance to all humankind so we can all find something interesting!
Greg,what im saying is; that there is a worldwide stereotype that women are generally interested in things around the household, which im saying is not true, but many women particularly housewives start to fall into this stereotype because they believe its the social norm, just like i would believe its is not the social norm for me as a man, to be interested in beauty or fashion. Thats not to say that there are not exceptions, there are men that are into that kind of stuff as there are many more women interested in, like you mentioned; evolution and dinosaurs.
Also i chose those two examples mentioned in my previous post; the second world war and the Russian revolution, because they were both almost male dominated interests, by using those two warlike subjects i was trying to prove a point.
Since we live in an age when students are likely to hear more about Marie Curie than about Albert Einstein, it is worth beginning with a statement of historical fact: Women have played a proportionally tiny part in the history of the arts and sciences. Others have found similar proportions. Even in the 20th century, women got only 2% of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences–a proportion constant for both halves of the century–and 10% of the prizes in literature. The Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, has been given to 44 people since it originated in 1936. All have been men.
The historical reality of male dominance of the greatest achievements in science and the arts is not open to argument. The question is whether the social and legal exclusion of women is a sufficient explanation for this situation, or whether sex-specific characteristics are also at work.
Mathematics offers an entry point for thinking about the answer. Through high school, girls earn better grades in math than boys, but boys usually do better on standardized tests. The difference in means is modest, but the male advantage increases as the focus shifts from means to extremes. In a large sample of mathematically gifted youths, for example, seven times as many males as females scored in the top percentile of the SAT mathematics test. We do not have good test data on the male-female ratio at the top one-hundredth or top one-thousandth of a percentile, where first-rate mathematicians are most likely to be found, but collateral evidence suggests that the male advantage there continues to increase, perhaps exponentially.
Evolutionary biologists have some theories that feed into an explanation for the disparity. In primitive societies, men did the hunting, which often took them far from home. Males with the ability to recognize landscapes from different orientations and thereby find their way back had a survival advantage. Men who could process trajectories in three dimensions–the trajectory, say, of a spear thrown at an edible mammal–also had a survival advantage. Women did the gathering. Those who could distinguish among complex arrays of vegetation, remembering which were the poisonous plants and which the nourishing ones, also had a survival advantage. Thus the logic for explaining why men should have developed elevated three-dimensional visuospatial skills and women an elevated ability to remember objects and their relative locations–differences that show up in specialized tests today.
Every time a women(or a man) sites ONE example of a woman doing something 10,000 men have done, 1.3., Amilia Earhart, it is the exception that proves the ruke. By the way Amelia failed in her attempt to do something men do as a matter of course!
So the issue is NOT that a particular woman might do something men can do but there will be 1000s of men at the highest levels of achioevement and a tiny fraction of that number will be women.
U. of Iowa study(biology IS destiny)
A University of Iowa study offers tantalizing clues as to why males show consistent statistical superiority to females in spatial skills. At least part of the explanation may lie in how the brain’s parietal lobes are organised.
UI researchers found that a thicker cortex in the parietal lobe in women is associated with poorer mental rotation ability, and in a new structural discovery, that the surface area of the parietal lobe is increased in men, compared to women. Moreover, in men, the greater parietal lobe surface area is directly related to better performance on mental rotation tasks. The study results were published online Nov. 5 by the journal Brain and Cognition.
…The findings underscore the fact that not only is the brain structure different between men and women but also the way the brain performs a task is different, said Peg Nopoulos, M.D., a study co-author and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.
“One possible explanation is that the different brain structures allow for different strategies used by men and women. While men appear able to globally rotate an object in space, women seem to do it piecemeal. The strategy is inefficient but it may be the approach they need to take,” said Nopoulos, who also is a psychiatrist with University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. _MachinesLikeUs
The statistical superiority of males in spatial skills and advanced mathematical reasoning leads to a higher proportion of males at the rarefied levels of mathematics and math-intensive fields of science, engineering, economics, etc. Such male superiority also leads to the preponderance of males as pilots, race car drivers, and other occupations requiring rapid spatial processing. Politically motivated polemicists often mis-attribute such occupational distributions as due to bias and discrimination.
More likely to have heard of Einstein than Currie, my ass. Making shit up is generally a sign of desperation in an argument, you know. Now, on the math test stats, you’re simply out of date. And it’s possible that you’re unaware that early experience shapes the brain and that differences between scans of men’s and women’s brains are getting smaller over time.
Evolutionary biologists have some theories that feed into an explanation for the disparity. In primitive societies, men did the hunting, which often took them far from home. Males with the ability to recognize landscapes from different orientations and thereby find their way back had a survival advantage….
As an evolutionary biologist I assure you that you are misrepresenting what evolutionary biologists say, and that you are pretty much a moron.
Arthur, I don’t know who Amilia Earhart, but Amelia Earhart failed in her attempt to fly around the world because one man was too drunk to remember to bring the right equipment and another man was too stupid to keep the battery alive on another piece of equipment.
My favourite thing about your blog Greg, is your ability to post a link, say very little and then garner the reactions.
Do you chart these responses somehow? A graph with x=dumbassery and y=almost diamonds and then scatter plot? If so, are the many points in top left corner resembling a Masaccio and the bottom right resembling a detailed crude picture of Donald Duck?
Or is it more like performance art and getting the audience involved?
The fact that you had to revert to name calling tells me you cant’t discredit anything i said. by the way the following stands unchallenged
“Women have played a proportionally tiny part in the history of the arts and sciences. Others have found similar proportions. Even in the 20th century, women got only 2% of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences–a proportion constant for both halves of the century–and 10% of the prizes in literature. The Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, has been given to 44 people since it originated in 1936. All have been men.”
If the shaping and grappling with the material world had been in the hands of women
a) we would still be living in caves
b) we would be eating nothing but berries
c) the human population of the world be no more than 30,000,000
Men are different from women. They are equal only in their common membership of the same species, humankind. To maintain that they are the same in aptitude, skill or behaviour is to build a society based on a biological and scientific lie.
The sexes are different because their brains are different. The brain, the chief administrative and emotional organ of life, is differently contructed in men and in women; it processes information in a different way, which results in different perceptions, priorities and behaviour.
In the past ten years there has been an explosion of scientific research into what makes the sexes different. Doctors, scientists, psychologists and sociologists, working apart, have produced a body of findings which, taken together, paints a remarkably consistent picture. And the picture is one of startling sexual asymmetry.
Some researchers have been frankly dismayed at what they have discovered. Some of their findings have been, if not suppressed, at least quietly shelved because of their potential social impact. But it is usually better to act on the basis of what is true, rather than to maintain, with the best will in the world, that what is true has no right to be so.
The fact that you had to revert to name calling tells me you cant’t discredit anything i said.
Well, that makes you a double moron. The fact that I “reverted” (do you know what that word means? I think not) too name calling is beause I was busy feeding the baby and didn’t fee like reading all of your drivel. I still haven’t. Nor will I.
I doubt I need to discredit anything you’ve said. From what I’ve seen you are doing an outstanding job of that one thing … making yourself look like a stupid ass.
Bravo!
Wow Greg, I never knew you had so many dolts reading your blog. Why do you suppose they’re here in the first place?
Amazing, simply amazing…
I dunno. I think I might be on Google or something.
The aptitude for abstract thinking:
There have been no women of genius and very few of considerable talent in chess, mathematics and musical composition and any other pursuit for which a high level aptitude for abstract reasoning is a necessary condition( while there have been many women of genius in literature and the performing arts, areas which have the least requirement for abstract reasoning)!
A greater male aptitude for abstact reasoning has been identifed in a wide range of cognitive tests and has been observed so often through out recorded history that we have the sterotype that ‘men are more logical than women’ and that a certain type of rigorous abstract thinking represents ‘thinking like a man’. These measured observations and sterotypes measure and reflect male superiority in an aptitude that is a necessary condition for genius in mathematics and related areas and a great advantage for even the lesser ability that is necessary for the usual professional work in these areas. These measurements and observations are sufficient to explain why all those MOST gifted with this appitude are males. Ther is very strong logical and physiological evidence that male superiority in the aptitude for abstract reasoning is rooted in physiology(testosterone)!
Of course, the fact that women haven’t been able to get training in many of these things at all until very recently and still don’t get training in the same numbers men do is still perfectly sufficient to explain those differences. And we have clear historical records for that, rather than having to rely on black-box measurements the way Arthur does.
Arthur, over the last few decades, one edifice after another of male intellectual superiority or special ability has fallen as children are exposed to less gendered environments. The very strong effects of gendered teaching and learning environments are impressive, and this level of effect is entirely expected from what we know about how brains develop in individuals.
There are almost certainly male-female differences in brains. There has to be, becasue there are distinct differences (on average) in certain developmental processes that are as sex-related as primary sexual characteristics. To put it simply, there must be primary sexual differences in brains just like there are in bodies because those bodies produce changes that we know affect neural systems.
However, strong and persistent differences between males and females typically disappear when the developmental environment is altered.
What I find interesting is that the most likely primary sex differences … the ones that will have overlapping but distinct bell curves even if you get rid of all of the post natal non-internal (i.e. endocrine) effects … tend to show female superiority. The ability to process sounds equally well via both ears and separately is demonstrably superior in little girls and that is retained throughout life. Androgen effects on the brain at various stages seem to mess up boy’s language abilities in many cases. Female brains are not laterally specific as male brains are, and hemispheres can act more independently AND communicate better.
This is why when you are busy doing something and your wife tries to talk to you, you get annoyed and have to stop what you are doing and then she can explain what she needs you to hear after you’ve calmed down. But if your wife is doing something and you talk to her she does not skip a beat and totally gets what you are saying. In fact, she may get what you are saying before you do.
if i may expand on an earlier post
abstract thinking and high achievement
There have been no women of genius and very few of considerable talent in chess, mathematics and musical composition and any other pursuit for which a high level aptitude for abstract reasoning is a necessary condition( while there have been many women of genius in literature and the performing arts, areas which have the least requirement for abstract reasoning)!
If M. Curie seems an exception there is a strong case that her contrbutions were experimental(empirical) not theoretical. That does not diminish her contributions but is consistant with the premise of the discussion here. And if you wish to argue that she was a theoretician then she is the exception that proves the rule.
A greater male aptitude for abstract reasoning has been identified in a wide range of cognitive tests and has been observed so often through out recorded history that we have the stereotype that ‘men are more logical than women’ and that a certain type of rigorous abstract thinking represents ‘thinking like a man’. Just like tests and historical observation lead us to say that â??women are more perceptive, intuitive and discerning of how people feel and what they might be thinking’
These measured observations and stereotypes measure and reflect male superiority in an aptitude that is a necessary condition for genius in mathematics and related areas and a great advantage for even the lesser ability that is necessary for the usual professional work in these areas, i.e., an applied mathematician vs a theoretical mathematician.
These measurements and observations are sufficient to explain why all those MOST gifted with this aptitude, i.e., abstract reasoning, are males. There is very strong logical and physiological evidence that male superiority in the aptitude for abstract reasoning is rooted in physiology (testosterone and its effect on the architecture of the brain)!
In test scores, the male advantage is most pronounced in the most abstract items. Historically, too, it is most pronounced in the most abstract domains of accomplishment.
In the humanities, the most abstract field is philosophyâ??and no woman has been a significant original thinker in any of the worldâ??s great philosophical traditions. In the sciences, the most abstract field is mathematics, where the number of great women mathematicians is approximately two (Emmy Noether definitely, Sonya Kovalevskaya maybe). In the other hard sciences, the contributions of great women scientists have usually been empirical rather than theoretical, with leading cases in point being Henrietta Leavitt, Dorothy Hodgkin, Lise Meitner, Irene Joliot-Curie, and Marie Curie herself.
In the arts, literature is the least abstract and by far the most rooted in human interaction; visual art incorporates a greater admixture of the abstract; musical composition is the most abstract of all the arts, using neither words nor images. The role of women has varied accordingly. Women have been represented among great writers virtually from the beginning of literature, in East Asia and South Asia as well as in the West. Women have produced a smaller number of important visual artists, and none that is clearly in the first rank. No female composer is even close to the first rank. Social restrictions undoubtedly damped down womenâ??s contributions in all of the arts, but the pattern of accomplishment that did break through is strikingly consistent with what we know about the respective strengths of male and female cognitive repertoires. Women have their own cognitive advantages over men, many of them involving verbal fluency and interpersonal skills.
I have omitted perhaps the most obvious reason why men and women differ at the highest levels of accomplishment: men take more risks, are more competitive, and are more aggressive than women. The word â??testosteroneâ? may come to mind, and appropriately. Much technical literature documents the hormonal basis of personality differences that bear on sex differences in extreme and venturesome effort, and hence in extremes of accomplishmentâ??and that bear as well on the male propensity to produce an overwhelming proportion of the worldâ??s crime and approximately 100 percent of its wars. But we take the good with the bad. If women were responsible for shaping and grappling with the material world we would still be living in caves, eating only berries and the human population would be about 30,000,000. But this is just one more of the ways in which science is demonstrating that men and women are really and truly different, a fact so obvious that only intellectuals could ever have thought otherwise.
As far as Mother Nature is concerned the female role of birth and nurturing is the most fundemental and important, the male role is only iceing on the cake.
Giving birth is a revealing example. What could be more feminine than giving birth? Throughout most of history and prehistory, giving birth was at the center of the womenâ??s sphere, and men were totally excluded. Men were rarely or never present at childbirth, nor was the knowledge about birthing even shared with them. But not very long ago, men were finally allowed to get involved, and the men were able to figure out ways to make childbirth safer for both mother and baby. Think of it: the most quintessentially female activity, and yet the men were able to improve on it in ways the women had not discovered for thousands and thousands of years.
Letâ??s not overstate. The women had after all managed childbirth pretty well for all those centuries. The species had survived, which is the bottom line. The women had managed to get the essential job done. What the men added was, from the perspective of the group or species at least, optional, a bonus: some mothers and babies survived who would otherwise have died. Still, the improvements show some value coming from the male way of being social. Large networks can collect and accumulate information better than small ones, and so in a relatively short time the men were able to discover improvements that the women hadnâ??t been able to find. Again, itâ??s not that the men were smarter or more capable. Itâ??s just that the women shared their knowledge individually, from mother to daughter, or from one midwife to another, and in the long run this could not accumulate and progress as effectively as in the larger groups of shallower relationships favored by men.
Arthur, you can always expand a prior comment, but why bother when it’s already been addressed? Easier than dealing with the criticisms of it?
although i saw discusssion of related issues i didn’t see any specific refutation of any specific point. if you can point one out to me i would be happy to resond
Arhur, has it occurred to you that male physicians co-opted the midwives’ knowledge and claimed it their exclusive domain, thereby excluding them from further significant participation? When physicians appropriated the duties of childbirth management and refused to allow women to participate (i.e. they were not allowed to become physicians), women were unlikely to contribute new ideas simply because they had no voice and no way of obtaining one. Not because of some inherent difference in the way they process information, but because they were ignored. Now that more women are physicians I would venture to say that contributions by both sexes are roughly equal.
yes women really invented everything but men co-opted their accomplishments, – this is a common excuse for why women can not achieve greatness except in the arena of care giving and literature, although all of the very greatest writers are also men. But if it makes you feel good about yourself I think you should hold onto this fiction.
I leave with a short article about brain sex differences from the University of Iowa, a study baced up by the history of human experience.
‘A University of Iowa study offers tantalizing clues as to why males show consistent statistical superiority to females in spatial skills. At least part of the explanation may lie in how the brain’s parietal lobes are organised.
UI researchers found that a thicker cortex in the parietal lobe in women is associated with poorer mental rotation ability, and in a new structural discovery, that the surface area of the parietal lobe is increased in men, compared to women. Moreover, in men, the greater parietal lobe surface area is directly related to better performance on mental rotation tasks. The study results were published online Nov. 5 by the journal Brain and Cognition.
…The findings underscore the fact that not only is the brain structure different between men and women but also the way the brain performs a task is different, said Peg Nopoulos, M.D., a study co-author and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.
“One possible explanation is that the different brain structures allow for different strategies used by men and women. While men appear able to globally rotate an object in space, women seem to do it piecemeal. The strategy is inefficient but it may be the approach they need to take,” said Nopoulos, who also is a psychiatrist with University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. _MachinesLikeUs
The statistical superiority of males in spatial skills and advanced mathematical reasoning leads to a higher proportion of males at the rarefied levels of mathematics and math-intensive fields of science, engineering, economics, etc. Such male superiority also leads to the preponderance of males as pilots, race car drivers, and other occupations requiring rapid spatial processing. Politically motivated polemicists often mis-attribute such occupational distributions as due to bias and discrimination.
Reasons for these statistical cerebral distinctions between male and female appear to center around sex hormone exposure in the womb and at other critical developmental periods. Women who are successful in the hard sciences, engineering fields, and other math-intensive vocations often have other male behavioural characteristics — suggesting male hormonal effect at some point in development.
Race and gender associated brain differences are very politically incorrect. Researchers who study such things tempt the Academic Thought Police. The amazing new tools of study in the neurosciences and psychological sciences are simply too powerful, however, not to use them to explore our rich and diversified human landscape.’
Greg,
Someone posted it already, but I’ll give it repeating.
The average female is smarter than the average male. But, the spectrum of intelligence in males is far more extensive. A man is 6 times more likely to be a genius and 6 times more likely also to be retarded.
Go to an elementary school and visit the special ed classrooms and the gifted classrooms, you will see boys largely overrepresented in both classes.
All that aside though, even if one sex was more intelligent in an absolute sense, what difference would it make?
You have a denigrating attitude towards your own sex and you champion it with such delight as if it’s a wonderful thing that you suck. The fact that you have a daughter worries me even more; you need to be there as a source of support for her and an example of what qualities she needs to look for in a man.
Genevieve: Thank you for your valuable advice as to how to raise my daughter. If only I had known this before I totally screwed her up.
Bullshit. Absolute bullshit.
Don’t you get it? Men are NOT smarter than women. We have been discriminated against for so long… we won’t take this argument sitting down thats for sure.
Men develop slower, have less concentration in class, would rather play wideo games than study, and are overall dorks. Let me tell you- men are overly conceited, proud, and vain, and women are very humble, quiet and caring.
Did you know that if some guy almost punched me but stopped cause I was girl I’d punch him? Yes. And I’d laugh. Men are not smarter than women and they never will be. Women are more resorsful, innovative and thoughtful. Why aren’t there more historic women in the past then? Because men, stupid men, decided to push us in a closet and dress us in frills and not let us do anything for ourselves. What a shame! Only now are women beginning to be encouraged to explore their world. And we do so. So don’t tell me I’m dumb. You won’t like the results.
What I have learned is that men are conceited stupid and can’t argue. So I give up. bye morons!
men and women of age, please don’t argue anymore as to who is the smarter. i guess the answer is too plain to see:
If men were smarter than women, Adam would not have eaten the apple eve gave him.
don’t you all get it? if that man (adam) would not have been dumb enough to follow the woman’s (eve) bidding, everything would have been all right up to now. that leaves men to be less smarter (way beyond lesser) than women!
Has anyone read Pink Brain, Blue Brain? It’s about the study of the different brains between genders, written by a female neuroscientist.
Arthur, honestly, I can understand what you are trying to say, but it sounds too much like you are trying to push the idea that if only women were in the house, popping out children, and didn’t try to advance themselves, that we’d be happy. That we’re pretty much incompetent unless in the realm of giving birth. Who cares about that? That’s a function, not a measure of female superiourity.
If anyone wants the link to Pink Brain, Blue Brain, here it is: http://www.amazon.ca/Pink-Brain-Blue-Differences-Troublesome/dp/0618393110
And Arthur, your suggestion that: If women were responsible for shaping and grappling with the material world we would still be living in caves, eating only berries and the human population would be about 30,000,000. But this is just one more of the ways in which science is demonstrating that men and women are really and truly different, a fact so obvious that only intellectuals could ever have thought otherwise”
is slightly ludicrous, because if women had been allowed the same opportunity to grow and develop ALONGSIDE men, how do we know that men and women wouldn’t have developed the same characteristics? i.e. evolved along a similar path with men? And why does it necessarily have to be a world dominated by women, as your post suggests? Why can’t men work together, or is that not good enough? Let’s be clear here, your suggestion the society would have failed in the hands of women, suggests that women are good as nothing less than as breeding machines, and that it is perhaps better to be born male, as the feminist Camile Pagila suggests. That women are illogical, emotional, and inferior in ever single respect, and that mother nature has made us this way.
Time and time again I come across these arguments as way to suggest that hey, if only women stopped working, stayed home, or just realized their own inferiority, we’d all be in a much better place. Women STILL underestimate their own intelligence; there’s even a huge study on this: http://www.newsweek.com/id/101079
I don’t know the answer, or why one gender has to be smarter than the other..but the constant put-downs towards women are annoying. You guys don’t like feminists, fine..but don’t put down women as a group..but hey, I’m just a woman, and women aren’t capable of abstract reasoning.
BTW, I would like to point out, that much of what Arthur has said, was merely copied and pasted here: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
Some of it the EXACT SAME WORDING! HE COULDN’T EVEN COME UP WITH HIS OWN WORDS!
Greg…Do you get paid for this? If you do, then it’s really a shame because your posted “article” is not only terribly written, it’s also false. The fact that scienceblogs lets you post your garbage reflects poorly on them too.
Every single statistic you claim to use was not cited in the article. Your “proof” consists of minor surveys in a small island nation that don’t even appear to be complete. Also, the BBC article clearly said:
The only exception is for Oxford and Cambridge, where men and women are now level.
So your only source describes the lack of an apparent gender gap in this small island nation’s elite educational institutions. Also, Great Britain’s educational system has declined dramatically according to many international reports and the book “All Must Have Prizes” by Melanie Phillips.
Here’s one of your fellow blogger’s views that are bolstered by facts.
http://www.matthewktabor.com/2007/08/07/three-doses-of-reality-for-british-education/
Here is the recent(2009) breakdown of medical school graduates by gender.
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparebar.jsp?ind=435&cat=8&rgnhl=35
It shows about a 50/50 split with an insignificant majority of male medical students.
I think that pretty much shows your post to be retarded in its entirety.
P.S. Social sciences aren’t real classes. Life sciences are though.
Luke, you seem to be rather perturbed. Is this because you know, at some level, that you are not as smart as your girlfriend?
Wow Luke, you managed to write a comment that was complete and utter bullshit, through and through. And managed to denigrate people who have nothing to do with the conversation at the same time. You may well be the biggest asshole I have run across this week and that is saying something…
Nothing like proving some boys are just innumerate like calling a population of 60 million a “small island nation.”
I think the article, and 99% of the comments in response. Are wrong.
Women are not “smarter” than men. Men are not “smarter” than women. The sexes are equally intelligent just in different ways.
I’m going to generalise a bit here as I don’t have the time of patience (or ability to type d/t carpal tunnel) to be more precise.
Men have difficulty comprehending things that women understand quickly, easily and completely. Women have difficulty comprehending things that men understand quickly, easily and completely. And most of the time, men and women comprehend things equally quickly, easily and completely.
Actually at the near genius level, 145 IQ or so, men outnumber women 8 to 1. Men have an average IQ of 105 to 100 for women. Women mature early, but we catch up at age 16 and from there to 21 significantly grow our intelligence. The downside to this there are more men in the lower IQ stratus than women. Could lend a good reason to that fact that men cause more crime. As far as scores go our schools measure diligence more than pure intelligence. We need more IQ testing to be sure that we are giving those that have the ability the means to excel. Not just those that have persistance, or good organizational skills of some sort. In the artical men’s brains are 8% heavier too. You have to tip your at to the stronger sex here. But then, Greg, you appear to be a complete idiot. Or are you just a moron? Simpleton perahaps?
In the artical men’s brains are 8% heavier too….
….sprong….
Thanks for the laugh, ed.
Ed, haven’t really been keeping up have you? You must be in that lower IQ stratus.
-.-
that aint true lil biach greg is obama a guy or a girl ask ur mum if u dont know and is einstein a guy or a girl is Jesus a guy or a girl is santa a guy or a girl so think about what u are sayin before u say it Dumb girl…
>.<
QED
oh please. to the angry commenters- it is so obvious that women are smarter than men. the fact that throughout history men continue to keep women down is the reason why there seems to be less female achievement. and iq tests and grades aside, a very very small percentage of men can tap into the sort of intuition & empathy that almost all women have. that is not measurable by a test, but it is invaluable to quality of life.
I’ve also read that academic achievements are correlated to someones attractiveness.
That it’s a fact.
What’s not a fact but probably everyone knows is that a man is much much more likely to give a woman (stranger) benefits because of her looks.
Maybe that “small” difference in how much more likely a man is to treat a woman biased would account for the difference in GPA scores etc?
I think I solved this
nicko, are you suggesting that heterosexual female professors and TAs don’t give a similar benefit to good looking men? Or are you simply assuming that all professors and TAs are heterosexual males?
Yes, because performance in school directly correlates with one’s intelligence.
Blog post fail.
Dave, your comment is #121. That’s arguably a blog post win, although the fact that you don’t know what those say suggests, perhaps, a reader fail.
Oh, I forgot, sometimes really dumb people get all A’s in school and also take all the really hard courses. Totally forgot.
I can prove that men are smarter than women. It’s very simple really.
Men don’t shave their eyebrows off then pain them back on.
And women don’t make dumb-ass mistakes like using “pain” for “paint” when trying to look superior. Nor do they subject themselves to steroids that shrink their gonads in the hopes of giving those gonads more opportunities. Your point?
Doug, did your father agree to have a chunk of your penis chopped off when you were born? You can’t paint that back on.
I rest my case.
(Not that plucking out one’s eyebrows and then painting them back on isn’t creepy, but offhand, I know only one woman who does that and I don’t know her well. In fact, I only know of her as the only person in town who plucks out her eyebrows and paints them back on.)
Most of the posters here are sexists. That includes Greg and Stephanie, as sexism goes both ways. To argue with that would only prove my point. To those of you who provide statistics instead of personalised remarks, while I respect your efforts, I can’t help but feel that it is only a worthless gesture.
I believe that every person has unique traits, without being restricted to your gender. For example, the media paints almost all men as sex-obsessed, arrogant dogs. I am a male who intends to keep my virginity to the grave. I don’t really care what kind of retorts you will undoubtedly use to counter that, what you do is your right, and not my business.
I am, however, sick of being oppressed just because I am male. The law and the media have both overcompensated, now favouring women. The basis of feminism was equality, not superiority. I don’t want men to dominate society either, I just want equality. But I doubt that it’s a possibility. Society will continually overcompensate, as the oppressed obtain their goals and then begin to hunger for more.
it’s really sad to see this kind of sexism persevere. it can seem amusing at first to think that women are smarter especially after the role society has put women in for so long, but if a simple answer with shallow proof helps you continue your prejudice, then go for it greg. let us all know when it’s time to segregate water fountains based on sex. what absolutely pathetic pseudo-science you’re perpetuating.
Well,as a female i have researched the male/female brain differences for some time.
I noticed that a male’s brain has just more potential than a female brain.
Its just the path of evolution.
And so far our illusion that we are smarter is cause we are more good with grades,the reason we get better grades its cause we are hardwired to be VERY dependent on society and our primary goal is how we look in a society ,thats why we work so hard at school and trying to achieve that “perfect” life.
Also is not right to compare people under 21 in intelligence,cause it is afterwards that a male brain fully develops.
We dont have the high abstract reasoning men have,its plain obvious,and us recalling some mathematician females doesnt do any good cause they were very few,their importance could be filled with any other mathematician etc.
BUT!!! That high reasoning level differences in everyday life DOESNT SHOW UP,a non-scientist researcher male can’t say “am a guy am smarter”
thats doesnt hold ANY power.
This difference applies ONLY to high sciences and original art.
NOT IN EVERYDAY LIFE.
For example if a Ferrari and a go-cart race in a speed limit of 10Miles per hour then both Ferrari and Go-Cart would be at the same speed,this level of thinking accounts for more than 99% of our life.
If the race was at 200Miles per hour then Ferrari would obviously win,but that level of thinking is LESS than 1% of our life.Aka the research sciences,and original art or something really innovative.
The main difference is INNOVATION.We can learn what men found and invented but we can’t create ,at least it EXTREMELY HARD and if achieved it doesnt even compares to a man’s innovation.
BUT!!! LESS than 0.000001 (possible even less) of MALES actually ACHIEVES that.
If you count all inverters,original artists,real philosophers etc(the people that made our world) you will see it is an EXTREMELY small portion of the total males.
Its like being proud of your football team you support and take credit for their successes,while at the same time you can’t even walk 5 minutes without getting tired.
Mentioning Einstein and other figures so you can appear smarter wont work,cause your not the DAMN EINSTEIN.
I dont wanna feel that am betraying my gender but rather am defending objectivity and science.
Don’t choke on your Adam’s Apple, “Martha”
@Richard,i know,i get that alot.
Some people call me overly logical.
I seek objectivity not convenience.
Martha, people call you overly logical for indulging in the naturalistic fallacy?
@StephanieZ believe me, i spent too much time on this.
I hope i find something else that will change my mind thats why i still looking from time to time but i also cannot ignore something because it makes my gender look less intelligent.
Well you call my logic flawed,what is your counter-opinion?
I mean how can we deny that todays world is 99.9% based on males,at least i can’t.
Martha, it would be helpful if you provided references to actual research rather than just your strong opinions.
I mean the Technological and Artistic world we live today.
How can you argue with that,we all learned it from history.
Men oppressed women,they didn’t had education etc.
So they only way to survive and have better life was to develop keen sense and social skills,they are perceptive but in interpersonal level,at expense of the male’s abstract thinking.
That did evolution,and because of that we are like this.
Well,my evidence for this is the same they got on gravity,its everywhere,its you and me ,past and present ,i can’t ignore gravity cause i might die falling of a cliff.
Wow.
Well, Martha, the point of my post is the fact that women are smarter than men as being utterly ubiquitous.
Ubiquitous U*biq”ui*tous ([-u]*b[i^]k”w[i^]*t[u^]s), a. [See{Ubiquity}.] Existing or being everywhere, or in all places, at the same time; omnipresent. — {U*biq”ui*tous*ly}, adv.
Like gravity.
Of course, there are exceptions.
If you didn’t liked my previous post then:
Now i ask you to answer this question.
Did or did not males developed the technology you’re living in today?
Yes or No? with or without why.
Please dont evade this question.
No.
The technologies that our species evolved with and used for millions of years and that made us human … the use of stone tools, wooden tools, and cooking … were probably invented by females. After that, other technologies may be considered an extension of that.
Often, technologies were invented and developed and maintained by females … such as pottery or cooking … and then only when an elaborated version of that technology that would allow males to show off was available, the males took it over.
And, to prove it, I know a female with a great rack of ribs, and tomorrow I’m going to take them and barbecue them. There may be underground storage organs of plants consumed as well.
I’ll rack of ribs you!
Martha doesn’t make sense.
No,apparently i dont make sense..
you win, women are smarter because Millions(yes,not thousands)as you say years ago women invented everything,even hunted ,men stayed at home and played video games.
And thats why todays woman is smarter.
If you exclude the fact that no matter how educated a woman is she can’t invent or think something original in high sciences or even philosophy.
But yeah.
Cool logic bro
Deic, that is not what I said. Have you read the post, bro?
@Gred
Yh,Martha actually explained her theories,you dont explain your theories you guess 100% you dont even bother to make silly explanations.
You guess it was female that invented.Why? what makes you believe?
You guess that women invneted cooking and pottery,why because it is more “feminine”?
Did women invented washing machines? did women invented hairdryer? did women invented ovens?
NO.
On the other hand we have all the evidence in the world that men did it,for example all todays scientists,philosophers etc,the medieval,the ancient,all thousands of men not even comparable with women,
and those few women that actually did thought of something,did invented of something they couldn’t even compare to a man’s accomplishments.
Your theory is the biggest insult to human logic,after reading your last post i dont consider you a human ,you’re an animal,you dont belong in my race or my gender,becaues you DONT HAVE LOGIC.
You’re wrong: men are more intelligent.
You’re right: men are more intelligent.
why?
I’ll you because you’re too stupid to get it that you proved bothways am right.
You actually said “men took over it” that means after thousands of years those that “took over” the technology they used their brain to construct,invented etc etc and the more you use it the more evolution “upgrades” thats why todays men are so intelligent.
Like nobel prizes which in order to get it you HAVE to find something new ,only 2% of women got the award on hard sciences and if you look that 2% you’ll noticed almost all of them shared,or was part of a team that won it etc,NOT by themselves.
Women have NOTHING to do with innovation,original thinking etc.
Deal with it.
You guess it was female that invented.Why? what makes you believe?
Belief is the wrong word here. I’m a scientist.
I’m going on the work of Bosch et all with the chimpanzees of the Tai Forest, Goodall’s work with chimps at Gombe, Wrangham’s work including his summary of chimp cultrures published in various places, work mainly by Japanes scientists with various primates, all indicated that male hominoids almost never do anything like this, but that females do it frequently.
Then, I’m extending this idea to the work by Laden (that’s me) and Wrangham on the chimp-human split, in which the use of embedded (underground) resources was a key element, and putting this together with Kappleman’s and Hunt’s work on embedded resources, all, again, suggesting female-driven technological evolution. Hrdy talked about this as well in “The Woman that Never Evolved” and elsewhere.
From there, we go to Wrangham’s work with me, Jones, Pilbeam and Conklin-Britain on the origin of cooking. We make a strong argument that females were the inventers of cooking and the main cookers for the course of human evolution. this is further expanded and developed by Wrangham in his recent book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
.
Greg, are you really being lectured by someone who keeps asking, “did women invented”? By someone who doesn’t understand how property rights affects the issuance of patents? By someone who doesn’t even know (and can’t be bothered to Google to find out) that a woman invented the circular saw and the dishwasher? Who can’t manage the math to figure out that an award that usually goes to teams of scientists will almost never go to a team of women when women are as drastically underrepresented in sciences as they were at the time most of these discoveries were made? Who can’t even figure out html tags?
Ooh, boy.
a woman invented the circular saw and the dishwasher?
ROFL
Actually, this commenter’s prose was hard to read. It’s all Greek to me.
Check wiki and you will see that saw machine is bullcrap.
I dont see why you compare a washing machine with male’s inventions,any male with average IQ could do it,if he cared,one century later someone cared and build an actual machine.
Thats stupid,women was misrepresented almost everywhere,how does that have ANYTHING to do with their intelligence today? you see so many women have academic “success” but do they think or invent anything? BARELY ,A JOKE compared to men.
Wheres the proof women are smarter?
You contradict yourself.
So far the only thing that you proved was the a woman is not completely retarded.
Thnx for the info.
Still not even close to men.
You dont get it do ya.
Deic, you don’t get many dates, do you.
@Enoch,its ok m8,you’r brain can’t think of anything better to say.
I dont really expect to understand,you’re no different than theists :ignorant,brainwashed,morons,narrow minded,0 logic.
I know ,i always play easy games,its like playing chess with animals,i always win but they dont know it.
But oh well,i need a pass time.
OP either troll posting with multiple accounts
or a woman that posts with multiple accounts
Chose one and gtfo of my internet
Deic, do you also think that women belong in the kitchen when they aren’t there for a man’s sexual pleasure (or fetus-bearing)?
You sound like a stereotypical misogynist.
And, Greg, it’s about damn time you admitted I am smarter than you 😉
Jaf
No,that is you making an assumption.
Women can do great in things already known,i was talking about abstract reasoning,innovation etc its all written.
Jaf,why do you think ur smarter than Greg? am not saying ur not,everyone is smarter than Greg,but why exactly?
If women are supposed to be smarter, than why do men on average score higher than women on IQ tests and why are all the smartest people men?
Four Names: Newton, Einstein, DaVinci, Gallileo.
Beat that!
This is bulshit. NO woman has ever made a new theory or maths formula, president of a major colege or awarded a significant noble prize.
http://www.livescience.com/health/060908_brainy_men.html
Just a scientific study, proving the IQ of women vs men. Sorry but women are not smarted then men. Thank you =).
Real Proof must be a guy. Not even smart enough to read the second section of the article he links and see that the explanation there matches the one already given in comment 35 here.
Maybe he readed it but did not understanded it.
I know plenty of women than whom I perceive myself to be far smarter. Likewise, I know may men than whom I perceive many corresponding women to be far smarter. One cannot say that all men are smarter than all women, nor can one say that all women are smarter than all men. For example, to propose that all women are smarter than all men, one must by extension propose that all women are smarter than Stephen Hawking. Are all women smarter than Stephen Hawking? I think not. What about brain-dead women? It seems to me that brain-dead women are not smarter than any man who is in full possession of his faculties. Similarly, it seems to me that brain-dead men are not smarter than any woman who is in full possession of her faculties. I apologize, but I must conclude that you are incorrect. Unless, of course, you mean to say that women on average are smarter than men on average, in which case I must conclude that you may or may not be correct because it is impossible to conduct an IQ test on every person in the world, even simultaneously, and be done before anyone else is born, and it is therefore impossible to calculate the average intelligence for each sex, and it is therefore impossible to compare them.
Furthermore, even if it were possible to conduct an IQ test on every person in the world simultaneously and be done before anyone else is born, the test would be ineffective because IQ is not an accurate representation of intelligence. In fact, as far as we currently know, intelligence cannot be quantified; therefore, the statement holds that it is impossible to compare the average intelligences of two genders.
Pantsman, obviously, we are speaking of averages here. Overlapping bell curves.
One does not have to test every person in the world to measure this. One only needs twenty years of testing males and females in the same class between two and five times a year.
But you’re a guy, so you probably would have a hard time understanding this. On average.
Actually, you would have to test every person in the world to compare the quantities with complete accuracy. Twenty years of testing males and females in the same class between two and five times a year is insufficient if you want to be able to know the truth without making any assumptions. This is one of the shortcomings of science: by engaging in a scientific study, one must assume three things: that one’s senses are not lying to him/her, that one is not crazy, and that just because a given event occurred over and over again under the same controlled conditions means that it will continue to occur over and over again under the same controlled conditions forever. None of these assumptions can be proven without using themselves, as demonstrated thusly:
1. To prove that your senses are not lying to you, you must have access to the experiences of other people. To access these experiences, you must use your senses, but if your senses may be lying to you, then you don’t know for sure that your senses aren’t just lying to you about the experiences of other people as well.
2. To prove that you are not crazy, you must utilize reasoning, as with any proof. However, if you do not assume that you are not crazy, there is no way to prove that whatever brand of reasoning you are using actually works.
3. To prove that just because a given event occurred over and over again under the same controlled conditions means that it will continue to occur over and over again under the same controlled conditions forever, what would seem the most sensible thing to do would be to look to history as a source of times during which the principle has shown itself to be true. However, by assuming that looking at history is a good way to predict what will happen in the future, you are actually assuming what you’re trying to prove.
Take a good look at number 3. By assuming that the research you’ve cited, which was conducted in the past, says anything about the present or future, you are making the assumption shown to be unprovable in good ol’ number 3 right there.
Essentially what I’m saying here is that if you can’t use the past to determine the present, then you can only use the present to determine the present, but it’s impossible to conduct a thorough and conclusive study on the present conditions fast enough that by the time it’s over, what was the present will still be the present and not the past; if we don’t assume that the past necessarily effects the present, then we can’t assume that the trend will continue even when the past wherein it originated is no longer the present. We can’t even conclude that the past influences the present because we’ve seen the past influence the present before, because we would be using the theorem that the past influences the present to prove that the past influences the present, which would be nonsense. Besides, we’d also be relying on our experiences, and our senses may have been deceiving us. Hence, women may have been smarter than men on average at some point in time, particularly the near past, but we can’t know for sure that that trend continues into the present, nor can we conclude it through reasoning, because we’d have to assume that the trend of trends continuing into the present continues into the present, which would require assuming that the trend of trends of trends continuing into the present continuing into the present continues into the present, and so on.
Forgive me if I’m showing myself to be a bit difficult to understand; I’m autistic, so I have a great deal of difficulty expressing my thoughts in ways that other people are capable of understanding.
I should also mention, if it matters to you, that my personal underlying bias is that men and women on average exhibit approximately equal intelligence, or that perhaps they fluctuate, one being more intelligent for a time, then the other, like yin and yang, spiraling into one another’s fields of being, over and over again, forever. I have no evidence for this bias; that is why I call it a bias and not fact. I guess I’m just trying to point out that in case it matters, my point is that men are just as intelligent as women, not that men are more intelligent than women, which I don’t believe they are.
And that is how you kill a discussion with a strong foundation in science: merely present the argument that science requires a priori assumptions that cannot be proven and in fact can be proven to be incapable of being proven.
Or you post on an ancient thread when everyone’s paying attention to an election. You’re welcome to claim that nothing is knowable, that the past doesn’t predict the future. You don’t actually live that way, though, so it’s pretty pointless as an argument. You demonstrably don’t believe it yourself; you came back assuming this thread would exist today because it existed two days ago.
Indeed. I make mistakes. I’m human. I hate humans. I hate myself, too, so I’m not really a hypocrite… I’m a lot of crappy things, but I’ve got to at least hand it to myself that that’s not one of them. Also, my intellectual beliefs differ from those upon which I act. Again, I’m human. Freaking humans. Most intelligent species on the Earth my ass. I can see right through all the arguments I’m reading on this site, and yet I can’t see my own ineptitude. You know wwhat, I think I really just don’t have anything better to do than find some provocative subject on which to pointlessly defend my values against people whose opinions I ordinarily wouldn’t give a shit about.
Nonetheless, I fail to see how being too human to live by my beliefs invalidates them as beliefsa. To me, a belief is something to think by, to use in philosophical journeys.. The rules I live by, on the other hand, really don’t seem to be my choice. The only power I have left is power over my own thoughts.
And one more thing that I forgot to say (yes, I forget to say a lot of things): I’m not claiming that the past doesn’t predict the future; I’m claiming that we can’t assume that it does because it’s unknowable. In real life, I base my decisions on my instinct, not what I know, but when the decisions hold value to me, such as decisions regarding my treatment of my fellow human beings, I switch into basing them on the one thing I know (that everything [except the said one thing] is unknowable), which usually leads me to indecision.
Ah, USA – the world of fagots, negros and horse-ugly man-hating feminist cunts. Thank god, that the majority of the World now hates you and your country is in a decline! You are going the Roman Empire way, but a lot faster.
Ironically, horses have been used as a standard of beauty for centuries. Perhaps you should use a different term, Michael. Perhaps “bigot-ugly”?
Most controlled studies indicate that male and female intellect is more or less equal, but with different probability distributions and different allocation across types of thought.
Absolute intelligence is, to the best of our ability to tell, a product of the number of connections in your brain. Women have a slightly lower brain mass, but this is more or less exactly balanced by having a higher mean number of connections per cell in some specific zones of the brain. The differences in network topology lead to slight differences in styles of thought, but as the total connection number is equal there is no absolute advantage.
At a societal level, there is of course a distribution of intelligence amongst individuals. This variability is partly due to genetic variability and partly due to upbringing, both socially and academically. Generally speaking, the mean intelligence is higher in girls but FWHM is larger in boys: that is, an average girl is slightly smarter than an average boy, but as a tradeoff a highly intelligent person is more likely to be male due to the broader shape of the distribution curve.
The similarity in connection density implies that there shouldn’t be any real separation in the mean intelligence, however at least a portion of the separation seems to come from the prevaling masculine/feminine cultures favouring studious behaviour more in girls and disruptive behaviour more in boys.
In any case, the intelligence curves neatly explain why most nobel prizewinners are men but why girls continue to get slightly (to moderately in some locations) higher grades.
Also, Stephanie Z its obvious that you are Greg etc.
You’re a female but thats ok.
It would be better if you didn’t attack the person directly.
Like the autistic guy above, you were sarcastic/ironic all the time.
He just expressed his opinion in the most peaceful he could ever do.
Why can’t you just answer without being so aggressive?
Please if you’re about to answer with comments that have sarcastic tone then dont answer at all.
If you dont agree with my post please explain why in a peaceful manner.
Actually, anon, the intelligence curves do nothing but compensate for a larger number of learning disabilities in males, as I explain here, on my blog (which you may note is not Greg’s blog): http://almostdiamonds.blogspot.com/2010/05/creating-genius.html
As for the rest of your comment, why are you asking me about being aggressive instead of all the guys continuing to show up on this thread being nastily dismissive of women and women’s intelligence? And what exactly was sarcastic in my (one) comment to “the autistic guy”? I told him he was wrong about why he didn’t receive a response and that he didn’t believe the epistemological argument he was making.
No, wait. If you are me, that that’s MY blog!
while the girls are achieving better grades in schoool why has nobody asked if the education system is gender biased towards female students? There is loads of evidence but cannot be proven because it will be a “sexist” hypothesis….
Very funny, Smithy. People make the claims that one ethnic group or ‘race’ is smarter than another, or that males are smarter than females, and rarely ask if the educaitonal system is biased. But now, you are suddenly asking. Why?
My experience, having administered objective tests to students taking my classes over many years of time, is that the girls perform as a group, on average, better than the boys. All the boys and girls are in the same room for lecture, getting the same material, and the tests are blind graded. No bias is really possible unless somehow in my lecture I speak girl better than boy, or the text is somehow girly and not boyish in some strange way.
Also, look at it this way, Smithy. I’m thinking your’ a guy, right? Now, think of the five other guys you know best, and think of the five girls you know best.
The girls are smarter, right? Of course they are. Case closed.
eseye combine idee yo pou we saw ka fe ak bagay misye a
The first counterargument you suggested to Smithy’s idea was that when the intellect of men was proposed as superior to that of women, nobody called into question the supposedly unbiased nature of the educational system, yet now that the opposite concept is being proposed, people are all over the idea of the educational system favoring the gender claiming to be displaying greater intellect. Immoral as it may be, this is no counterargument to Smithy’s case; the morality (or lack thereof) in arguing a point is irrelevant to the point’s logical validity (or lack thereof).
As to the second counterargument, the bias at play may not be one that is shown in the grading of work; perhaps women are simply learning more in class and therefore producing and completing work of higher quality. The bias may be in *what* is being taught. It is possible that women have natural tendencies to understand different kinds of acquired information than men, and that more feminine information is being taught than masculine information, thus leading to a greater level of comprehension in women on average than in men. If this were in fact the case, even those from whom the bias originates would be oblivious to it if it was not known what information was comprehensible to a male mind and what information was comprehensible to a female mind; such ignorance may easily be created by an unconscious base assumption that men and women learn in the same ways.
As for the final counterargument, you didn’t wait for Smithy to respond. How do you know that the men he selected weren’t smarter than the women he selected? Frankly, even after he selected them, how would *he* know? He may not be qualified to analyze the intellect of others. His methods may produce inaccurate results.
Pants: The “first counter argument” was not a counter argument. It was a statement. Are you refuting the statement or just using it as a smoke screen?
Regarding the second counter argument, fine, I’ll agree with your point. Women are not smarter than men. Men are smarter. But when women are in college, perhaps women are simply learning more in class and therefore producing and completing work of higher quality. But they are still dumb-ass bitches. I love that. Women are not as smart as men, but they just learn better and test better and are overall … smarter and stuff. You’re not the first person to make the argument here, but you did manage it with fewer misspellings.
Regarding the third counter argument, I have no idea what you are talking about.
I am refuting the statement, but that is because I thought you were using it as a counterargument. If you were not, then I have no qualms regarding the statement.
Okay, so you agree that women are not smarter than men. But where on Earth did you get the idea that *men* are smarter than *women*? You haven’t provided any evidence. Honestly, given the way you argued that, I’m less compelled to believe it than I am to believe that women are smarter than men. Given the amount of evidence I’ve seen from personal experience, I’m more compelled to believe that men and women possess approximately equal average intelligence than I am to believe eiither of the other two theories. Onto a further explanation of my actual point: my speculation was that men have a different style of learning than women and perhaps understand different information than women do, and that this style of learning is not being accommodated sufficiently, nor is the said information being sufficiently taught. In this frame of thought, if masculine learning were being unfairly promoted rather than feminine learning, boys would be doing better than girls, and if the two styles of learning were promoted alongside one another, noth genders would thrive. You somehow interpreted this to mean that feminine learning is more efficient than masculine learning. Perhaps it is because I am stupid as you say (if indeed I am), but I fail to see the correlation between these two concepts.
As for the last thing I said, I was referring to when you instructed Smithy to pick his 5 closest male friends and his 5 closest female friends and compare their intellects. I hope this clarifies matters.
Okay, so you agree that women are not smarter than men.
Ah, well, honestly no. Women are clearly smarter.
But where on Earth did you get the idea that *men* are smarter than *women*?
I don’t think that, no.
I’m less compelled to believe it than I am to believe that women are smarter than men.
Well good, because the latter is true. Obviously.
Onto a further explanation of my actual point: my speculation was that men have a different style of learning than women and perhaps understand different information than women do, and that this style of learning is not being accommodated sufficiently, nor is the said information being sufficiently taught.
Very, very unlikely. We don’t need to speculate or guess. Our system of education was developed in a patriarchal setting. The only studies I know of that have found gender biases demonstrate biases against girls.
As for the last thing I said, I was referring to when you instructed Smithy to pick his 5 closest male friends and his 5 closest female friends and compare their intellects. I hope this clarifies matters.
That will be interesting.
Ah, well, honestly no. Women are clearly smarter.
And:
I don’t think that, no. (in reference to But where on Earth did you get the idea that *men* are smarter than *women*?)
Compare:
Regarding the second counter argument, fine, I’ll agree with your point. Women are not smarter than men. Men are smarter.
I smell a contradiction. Maybe I just left the oven on or forgot to take out the garbage or something, but I’m pretty sure I smell a contradiction.
Very, very unlikely. We don’t need to speculate or guess. Our system of education was developed in a patriarchal setting. The only studies I know of that have found gender biases demonstrate biases against girls.
First off, even if our system of education was developed in a patriarchal setting, it makes sense that men would exercise bias against themselves in education; they may have selected topics that they found difficult in order to ensure that only the most intelligent men would understand the material, which would in turn ensure that only said men would perform important jobs. This strategy may or may not have worked, but it makes sense that it would have been implemented. As for bias against women in the educational system, it seems to me that said bias was present in the form of insufficient information being allotted to them rather than information that they cannot comprehend. Recall the women’s revolution that took place alongside the growing drive for emancipation of slaves that sparked the Civil War in our country; let’s take a look, for example, at the Seneca Falls convention. The speakers here at one point listed many of the common arguments given by men against the education of women in matters of law. At least one such argument stated that women possess too great a natural propensity for law, and that if women were allowed to learn law, they would overthrow men using legal logic. I would say that this idea was at least partially correct, given that we’re able to have the argument we’re having now without someone calling you out for being cross with your natural superior or something stupid like that. When there was an educational bias against women, it wasn’t that the information that women had a greater propensity than men to collect wasn’t considered valuable; it was that women simply weren’t permitted to collect it, and when they attempted to collect it, they weren’t supported in doing so, and therefore more often than not fell on their faces. This is a different matter entirely; the educational prejudice against men back then was one that was self-induced: they forced themselves to learn how to deal with things using a female way of thinking instead of learning everything from their more natural male way of thinking. Since the two educational prejudices were of different kinds, they would have coexisted despite being oppositely directed.
Also, look at it this way, Smithy. I’m thinking your’ a guy, right? Now, think of the five other guys you know best, and think of the five girls you know best.
The girls are smarter, right? Of course they are. Case closed.
What I’m referring to is this. You asked him to pick five close male friends and five close female friends and compare their intelligences. Which friends he thought were more intelligent is completely irrelevant if he is assumed to be fallible in this decision.
One more thing: my opinions and I are probably not the best source of information on this topic; I am sixteen years old and therefore do not yet possess an adult education in history, biology, neurology, craniometry, anthropology, psychology, or any of those other -logies and -metries. Nonetheless, I am confident in my use of logic and philosophy; if they cannot be trusted as science can, nor then can I, but if they can indeed be trusted as science can, then my ideas grow greatly in merit. Whether you trust logic and philosophy is up to you. If you only trust logic and not philosophy or you only trust philosophy and not logic, or you trust neither of them, I suggest you ignore me.
You know what, my IQ is 138. I’m not a genius, but I’m in the gifted range. When I was a child, I was tested for several cognitive capabilities, and my scores were consistently far off the charts. I’ve been complimented quite a few times on my piano playing, but I’ve never had a lesson in my life, formal or informal, just my own solitary pursuits. I reproduced the mathematical formulas of Pythagoras in a few hours without even knowing it. I am miles ahead of my peers in my math and science classes despite having been taught no more than they have, possess the blackbelt rank in taekwondo, possess an intuitive understanding of grammar, and know the Racket programming language backwards, forwards, and any old way. I am an avid artist, creative writer, and composer, and I have received acclaim from multiple people for my works in each of these art forms. Those who know me often consider me a beacon of wisdom and look to me for advice. Why, then, do I feel so empty and unaccomplished that I have to come here and defend my opinion? Do I perhaps feel patronized? Why did I just tell you all that, anyway? Was I perhaps seeking gratification of some kind, some sort of acknowledgment that I was smarter than you, that I was better than you? How could I be so infantile, so immature, as to fall into the same trap I so cautiously sought to avoid, to respond to condemnation with condemnation, to respond to insult with insult? Why am I asking you these questions? Am I perhaps requesting psychoanalysis? And if I am, why am I psychoanalyzing myself? Don’t I know that that sort of thing never ends well for anyone? Why am I asking myself what I know? Shouldn’t I know the answers to these questions? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody ever experiences it or its effects on its surroundings in any form ever again, did it really fall? Am I insane? No, wait, I know the answer to that one: of course I am. Does it really matter? Does anything really matter?
Furthermore, why does it really matter which sex is smarter? Let’s suppose that women are smarter than men. Does that mean that men should be treated with any less empathy than women? Does that mean we’re less sentient than you, less capable of emotion, somehow possessing less of a soul? Does it mean that now you get to treat us like animals and kick us around? If so, why? Is this revenge for the sexism you so long endured? Is this revenge for how the men of yesteryear withheld your education, your physical comfort, even your property and children? But how can you blame us for that sexism? After all, the men alive today are not the men who so brutally oppressed women back when they were so brutally oppressed, nor are the women alive today the women who were so brutally oppressed back then… Even if there are men alive today who still oppress women and withhold from them the rights they deserve as human beings, those men cannot represent all men, nor can the men who do not oppress women and withhold from them the rights they deserve as human beings. Decide what you will regarding the comparison of male intellect to female intellect, but I smell a storm coming, and no matter how hard it rains, I will settle for no more and no less than pure gender equality. I will defend this equality with philosophy, logic, and, if necessary, violence. All human beings, regardless of intellect, morality, mental stability, and any other conditions, deserve the same rights. I will stand by this belief for as long as I live, and, if it shows to be possible, longer. You cannot move me. Science cannot move me. Nothing can move me.
… That was me pretty much completely pouring out all of my emotions. You can go ahead and laugh now if you want.
As for bias against women in the educational system, it seems to me that said bias was present in the form of insufficient information being allotted to them rather than information that they cannot comprehend.
You don’t need to speculate.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CB8QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Forg.newtrier.k12.il.us%2Facademics%2Fenglish%2Fresearch_guide%2Fpdfs%2Foutline_sample_sentence.pdf&rct=j&q=K-12%20bias%20against%20girls&ei=zOHnTJznIJCengf2qdmUDQ&usg=AFQjCNHICYghkSbQ4gNDi88kKasVwpWZdQ&sig2=Ik_0R__k9tRtN9CjUsz0QA&cad=rja
http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1989/05/03/08280043.h08.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1989/05/03/08280043.h08.html&levelId=2100
http://books.google.com/books?id=lwEAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=K-12+bias+against+girls&source=bl&ots=jDlbuhNLvN&sig=b6dJhO-U5L47BRjeK1YXr_z4Wis&hl=en&ei=zOHnTJznIJCengf2qdmUDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=K-12%20bias%20against%20girls&f=false
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=3D90E5278CDD51A2121BE6BC3638AF65.inst1_2a?docId=5001967387
http://www2.edc.org/WomensEquity/pubs/digests/digest-math.html
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/how_to_get_more_women_in_math.php
As for bias against women in the educational system, it seems to me that said bias was present in the form of insufficient information being allotted to them rather than information that they cannot comprehend.
You don’t need to speculate.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CB8QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Forg.newtrier.k12.il.us%2Facademics%2Fenglish%2Fresearch_guide%2Fpdfs%2Foutline_sample_sentence.pdf&rct=j&q=K-12%20bias%20against%20girls&ei=zOHnTJznIJCengf2qdmUDQ&usg=AFQjCNHICYghkSbQ4gNDi88kKasVwpWZdQ&sig2=Ik_0R__k9tRtN9CjUsz0QA&cad=rja
http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1989/05/03/08280043.h08.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1989/05/03/08280043.h08.html&levelId=2100
http://books.google.com/books?id=lwEAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=K-12+bias+against+girls&source=bl&ots=jDlbuhNLvN&sig=b6dJhO-U5L47BRjeK1YXr_z4Wis&hl=en&ei=zOHnTJznIJCengf2qdmUDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=K-12%20bias%20against%20girls&f=false
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=3D90E5278CDD51A2121BE6BC3638AF65.inst1_2a?docId=5001967387
http://www2.edc.org/WomensEquity/pubs/digests/digest-math.html
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/how_to_get_more_women_in_math.php
Okay, first, I don’t care if I don’t have to speculate. I don’t really feel like going out and searching for “evidence” to “prove” my point, since I don’t really believe in that sort of thing anyway. I’m not asking you to believe what I’m speculating even though I haven’t provided any evidence. I’m asking you to consider it possible as an alternative explanation of the evidence and to value your fellow human beings enough to refrain from mistreating them and discriminating against them on basis of gender in the future until information of absolute certainty is uncovered that cannot be interpreted in any way at all except that women are smarter than men. I believe that we as a gender have already learned our lesson or are nearing that point. Therefore, the only reason I can fathom as to why you would want to mistreat us and would therefore seek justification for doing so is revenge. Revenge solves nothing. If anything, revenge will reproduce the problem; if females call us stupid and oppress us, we’ll eventually rebel, and, as an all-too-common folly of human nature, the rebellion will not only free us but also produce a prejudice against females for being so immoral as to oppress us, and then we’ll oppress them, just like in the old days. And then they’ll oppress us and we’ll oppress them and they’ll oppress us and we’ll oppress them, over and over and over again. Is that what you want?
So I was right then. The evidence you’re presenting appears to back up my statement that:
As for bias against women in the educational system, it seems to me that said bias was present in the form of insufficient information being allotted to them rather than information that they cannot comprehend.
It’s not that they couldn’t understand the information if it was taught to them with the same attention and care as that with which it is taught to males; it’s just that they aren’t being given that attention and care. If indeed the subjects being taught in school and the methodologies being used are mostly subjects and methodologies that contribute to feminine thought patterns more than masculine thought patterns, it makes perfect sense that once given the same amount of attention in school as males are given, females would surpass them regardless of comparative intelligence between the two sexes (unless men are actually much smarter, which, given the evidence, I really don’t think they are). I have already given my reason for believing that feminine thought process subjects would have been selected in a patriarchal society rather than masculine thought process subjects: males find feminine thought process subjects difficult; therefore, they would have reasoned that anyone who can understand them must be smart enough to have a job.
I am very opposed to discriminating against people, and I am very skeptical of alleged innate differences between people divided into categories (gender, “race” etc.)
Nonetheless, I do very much appreciate the fact that you’re taking me seriously enough to consistently refute my statements despite the fact that you think I’m stupid. That really means a lot to me. Thanks, Greg. Just so you know, that wasn’t sarcasm.
From here I can’t say anything about you being stupid or not. I don’t think you’ve fully appreciated the context of this conversation … what goes on here on this blog, what I’ve written about gender differences, other comments, etc. and I don’t think that you’ve addressed the gender difference issue with the understanding that it is very heavily researched and considered.
But that’s fine, this is a blog, not an oral exam for your masters degree in sociology or something.
You should read through the comments on this post and see what kind of pattern is there. It’s really quite interesting. I’m seriously considering a somewhat edited version of this post together with comments as a publication of some sort.
I am very opposed to discriminating against people, and I am very skeptical of alleged innate differences between people divided into categories (gender, “race” etc.)
Didn’t notice this comment before. Anyway, that’s good to know. Now I feel certain that the information you’ve found won’t be used for discriminatory purposes… Well, not by you, anyway.
From here I can’t say anything about you being stupid or not.
I’d rather this not be a relief to me for the sake of my own ability to believe that I am a good person. Nonetheless, in all honesty with myself and others I am relieved.
I don’t think you’ve fully appreciated the context of this conversation … what goes on here on this blog, what I’ve written about gender differences, other comments, etc. and I don’t think that you’ve addressed the gender difference issue with the understanding that it is very heavily researched and considered.
I understand that it is very heavily researched and considered. I have read through the evidence presented. I have read through other studies as well. However, when new information is discovered that may impair the capacity of members of one group of people to feel empathy toward members of another group of people, I will do everything in my ability to prevent the information from being interpreted in a manner that encourages this impairment. Compassion is the single most important resource consumed in the creation of well-being, and it is quickly dwindling. Please, let’s not do anything to make it dwindle any more quickly.
…
On the other hand, we Aspies do have a tendency not to look before we leap. Maybe you’re right; maybe I missed something.
But that’s fine, this is a blog, not an oral exam for your masters degree in sociology or something.
You’re right. Perhaps I’m underestimating (lol, almost wrote “misunderestimating”; damn you, George W. Bush; damn you and your grammatically and semantically incorrect yet incredibly catchy use of language) your influence on the world. Then again, perhaps not. I know you’ve certainly influenced me, though probably not in the direction you intended to influence people, if you intended to influence people at all. You seem very popular with those who agree with you, and definitely far more popular with those who do not. I’m not so sure that what is said here will not one day hold more value than an oral exam for my hypothetical master’s degree in sociology.
You should read through the comments on this post and see what kind of pattern is there. It’s really quite interesting. I’m seriously considering a somewhat edited version of this post together with comments as a publication of some sort.
I see patterns such as the following:
– The general tendency of males to argue that males are intellectually superior to females.
– The general tendency of females to argue that females are intellectually superior to males.
– A majority of dissenting opinions, possibly due to a majority of comments written by males.
– The general tendency of male writers to fall into one of the two following categories:
— Type A: Uses profanity and/or makes explicit ad hominem cases. Often does not thoroughly read the previous comments. Often continues to assert himself in much the same manner, even after his comment has been refuted, and may not even address the rebuttals.
— Type B: Uses relatively well-constructed sentences. Does not explicitly insult the writer of the argument to which he is responding, but may do so implicitly, either deliberately or as a failure of self-restraint. Often stops commenting after either being ignored for a sufficient period of time or receiving (and probably subsequently internalizing) a rebuttal.
– The tendency of the comparative qualities and quantities of male and female input to the conversation to convey the very conclusions of the conversation: notice how the apparently female input was better constructed than the male input in general, but the generalization could not necessarily be trusted because there were so fewer female comments than male comments.
Are any of these patterns similar at all to the ones you noticed, or am I just hallucinating again?
Whoops. When I said underestimating, I meant overestimating. Derp.
As for your “objective tests” to students taking your classes over “many years of time”, who can testify to that?
I do believe you just called me a liar. Did you? You have five seconds to apologize before I delete you.
Times up.
I did not call you a liar. But it has been stated several times that a scientist does not base their facts on the word of one person alone. That was an actual question, not an underhanded way of calling you a liar.
No, you demanded proof that I really did administer midterm and final exams to students over and over again and typically (as in always with the large intro classes) had higher scores among females than among males. That is an observation I’ve made that you apparently would prefer not to believe. No, your suggestion that I am telling you a lie is not at all underhanded. It is quite overt and unmistakable.
I only want some sort of reference. Is a job resume calling you a liar by asking for you to list references? What kind of scientist asks you to believe their word alone? I don’t even know why I’m bothering with this.
Third, my comment, to which you refer, was that I have personally given tests to large groups of students taking the same class over and over again. As it happens the testing results software gives me the results by gender, and it is perfecdtly normal that in these large samples the average score for the girls is higher than for the boys, and that is how the test results have come back without exception.
How the fuck, if I may ask as politely as possible to conjure up on a fine Saturday morning, do I provide you with a reference to that?
You started out by calling me a liar. Now you are calling me a “bad scientist” because no one has ever published a peer reviewed paper on the test results of Anthropology 1001 at the University of Minnesota. WTF?
Go. Away.
Language is boundlessly subjective: any comment can be interpreted as anything; therefore, any comment can be interpreted as a personal attack.
As for your “objective tests” to students taking your classes over “many years of time”, who can testify to that?
This could be interpreted in many ways. To someone who was raised in a culture wherein whenever they questioned an established idea, they were rewarded for their novel idea with ice cream by the one who initially established the idea, this could be interpreted as a personal request for ice cream; then again, I suppose that this explanation is highly improbable given the fact that the comment was posted on the internet, whereby physical objects cannot yet be transported as far as I know. I suppose you could buy him an ice cream on amazon.com or something, but that probably wouldn’t work well because it would melt before it got to him; besides, I’m guessing that neither of you come from any culture that fits the above description, anyway.
It could also be interpreted as a personal attack, a statement that you are a liar. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, either, except that internalizing the comment can then cause emotional pain, making the only option that prevents emotional pain be to not internalize it, the consequence of which is impaired empathy for the person who initially made the statement. I guess that doesn’t matter much if you’re planning on never communicating with the person again. I, for one, have interpreted plenty of things as personal attacks myself. It’s only a human decision; we interpret things that could be interpreted in many ways as personal attacks because deep inside, we feel that if they are personal attacks and we don’t interpret them as such, then we are endangering ourselves. It may not even be a feeling in some individuals, but it’s always there as a reaction developed through evolution for the purpose of protection. If a caveman saw something running at him that was probably a tiger with jaws open but didn’t look exactly like one and could be a number of other things, would he not club it in the head anyway?
This isn’t a rebuttal, by the way. I don’t rebut. I don’t debate. I don’t believe in debates. This is just a comment like any other, except a bit more confrontational, but I assure you that despite the confrontational nature of the comment, you have nothing to fear, as despite your controversial beliefs (with which I still don’t agree) formed by the paradigm of science (with which I’m not sure if I agree), you seem pretty awesome to me. Peace. c\//m
Pant: I don’t know about the ice cream part but there is an aspect of the personal attack you need to include. This is my blog. I reserve the right to summarily delete or disemvowel personal attacks just like I reserve the right to shout “Get off my lawn” out my back window (the front lawn is not worth yelling about) or slamming the door in the face of someone who rings the doorbell just to attack me (rare).
But in this case I think there is just a total misunderstanding. For example, I don’t think Third understands the term “objective tests.” (Objective tests are tests that have a style of questioning that can be scored by a computer, like multiple choice. They are not “objective” in any other sense. … only in the sense that a person does not have to read some prose and try to figure out if the student gets a certain concept or knows a certain fact.)
I reserve the right to summarily delete or disemvowel personal attacks just like I reserve the right to shout “Get off my lawn” out my back window (the front lawn is not worth yelling about) or slamming the door in the face of someone who rings the doorbell just to attack me (rare).
Indeed you do. I respect that right. Oh, how I respect that right. Especially the lawn part. I love doing that. It makes me feel so… old. Like that guy in Up. GET OFFA MAH LAWN YEW KIIIIYUDS.
Random fun things aside, the question is as to whether you want to exercise that right. Or rather, that was the question. Now it’s fairly clear to me that you do want to exercise that right, so… Take it away. Knock yourself out. Or don’t. Or whatever.
But in this case I think there is just a total misunderstanding. For example, I don’t think Third understands the term “objective tests.”
Ah, yes, misunderstandings. In the same way that there are three primary colors of light and three of pigment, from which all other light and pigment is formed, there are two primary evils in this world: fear and ignorance. I might be missing one. I’m not sure.
Greg, you’re absolutely right. This is your blog, and you have the right to delete personal attacks and such. If you truly believe that I called you a liar, then I apologise. It was not my intention. I’m not trying to challenge you, Greg, however, when I go to a blog supposedly dedicated to science, I want to see something unbiased and science-based. I mean, what kind of scientist asks you to depend on faith?
Third, you are still telling me that the only thing I’m allowed to do on my blog is to make reference to peer reviewed research. That is not appropriate. Many many conversations in science happen that involve elements that are not specific references to peer reviewed science. Instead of imposing your unrealistic and inappropriate expectations on this blog, why not take the opportunity to see first hand how real scientists think about and discuss the issues that interest them?
Also, you are also telling me that when I make the statement that I’ve given a test to students in a certain class dozens of times and find that girls do better than boys habitually, that the only way you can believe that is by a leap of faith. How is that not questioning my honesty?
Third, if you want your beliefs not to be based on faith, then don’t believe anything. Science is based on faith, as I’ve demonstrated above. Logic is based on faith. The very composure of your mind is based on faith. If you want to believe something, it can’t not be based on faith.
Women are more intelligent than men? First-off Brainiac, anyone with even a bottle cap full of grey matter knows that any form of “education” is merely a loosely accurate representation of one’s ability to repeat on a test something that’s spoken to them, or they’ve read in a book. It isn’t a measure of intelligence at all. Someone repeating something isn’t any more impressive than hearing my tape-recorder repeat it to me. As far as your own little report here is concerned: Congratulations… if your test results reveal anything, they reveal that women can repeat things that have been told to them. This trait has obviously been honed from years of gossiping about inane, bubble-headed b.s. to one-another.
If you really want to know who the more intelligent gender is it should be as obvious as looking around you. Look at what you’re reading this on. Do you think a woman invented the screen? How about the computer? How about…. everything that makes your life worth a crap? That’s right… 99.8% of every patent that was applied for that was deemed a “useful product” was created by a white European male. From the Airplane the Wright Brothers invented to the internal-combustion engine in your car. Men have discovered countless ways to make life better for society as a whole.
Now name a famous female inventor… Name ANY WOMAN off the top of your head that invented ANYTHING. Yeah… they’re really contributing to the advancement of society with all that advanced knowledge they have on us.
The only thing women create out of nothing is drama, and problems. They’re incapable of coming up with anything of any use. They’re weak in both body and mind and are unable to even remain faithful to one partner in a relationship. They’re utterly useless but it’s okay… because they’re pretty.
The only true justice in this world is that women age. After they have, and their looks have left them… only then do they realize their actual worthlessness. I’d rather be intelligent and mechanically-inclined than attractive and useless.
On a final note; do you see how easy it was to prove my point without having to resort to “I’m better because I can lift more than 50 pounds over my head”? If you want you can add that one too. It’s the reason why not only are men responsible for inventing everything that makes our lives worthwhile… they ALSO HAD TO BE THE ONES TO BUILD IT ALL TOO. This entire blog has proved nothing other than the fact that you are ignorant enough to believe that because some self-important, pompous professor says something, or puts a number on a piece of paper that it suddenly makes it a fact. Forgive me, but instead of your erroneous test-results, TRY LOOKING AROUND YOU. Not only are women less-intelligent than we are…. they’re damned near useless!
YA misogynist dick has discovered his voice on the Internet.
That’s your response? Did you take that straight from one of your college textbooks professor, or were you able to form that thought without having your hand held? Obviously this entire blog is an ill-fated attempt to score points with the fairer gender because you’re at a loss to effectively debate my previous post. Looking at the time or your reply it’s also painfully apparent that you dutifully check this blog as soon as you get out of bed in the morning to see if anyone will give a nod of approval toward your baseless, sexist opinions. Either that, or you’re a man born with an extra female chromosome who’s just a few dollars shy of a sex-change and is more concerned with his own opinions rather than acknowledging anything based in fact. Calling me a dick is hardly going to effectively dispute anything in my afore mentioned statements. You could eat an entire bowl of them before breakfast and it isn’t going to stop the planets from spinning, the oceans tides from changing, or the fact that you’re as ignorant as you are arrogant. To recap:
Your ‘Fact’- “A teacher gave a girl an ‘A’ on her test!”
My Fact – “Men gave the teacher everything else”
As far as your opinion of me is concerned… look at the subject of this blog. If you’re actually as out-of-touch with reality as the beginning of it implies, why would anything you have to say about anyone matter to them?
BTW… are you related to Bin Laden?
Scott, why should Greg spend any more time on you? You can’t even be bothered to read the comment thread before repeating assertions that have already been refuted in it. In fact, I think the only part of your “argument” that hasn’t already been covered is its boring, unoriginal nastiness. And frankly, that part should be allowed to stand all on its own. Under your name.
Are we seriously this fucking childish? I’m a man, and I’ve seen plenty of intelligent men and women in my life. Is this not the 21st century, and we still happen to think that anatomy is the only thing that influences intelligence?
It may to some degree influence intelligence, but unless you’re mentally retarded or Will Hunting. For the most of it it’s somewhere in the middle. In my own experience I have an extremely good memory, and in this entire semester I have studied maybe 5 hours in total and am on track to get somewhere between a 3.2 and 3.5GPA.
It probably has a lot less to do with the fact that I have a dick and a lot more to do with the fact that when I was 2 years old my grandpa began going over numbers with me and addition and subtraction by 3. I also used to play Go-Fish, and Memory with him a lot. I played with legos and kinex too. I didn’t get placed in front of the TV. I guarantee this has way more to do with intellect than anything else.
But instead of coming up with something constructing lets just shout hurtful and sexist bullshit back and forth at each other. And honestly who gives a fuck which sex is smarter, I don’t care if women overall have better grades, than I or other men do. Is there some kind of competition I never heard about that’s been going on since I was in pre-school to do better than women?
I made a few errors too, and there isn’t an edit option, lets see how long it takes for some troll fuck to come correct my spelling, because that something constructive.
ThisIsBullshit: I agree. We need an edit option. I hope we get one.
Scott, being a dick about it does not make you not a dick. You’re still a dick.
Also, this: Your ‘Fact’- “A teacher gave a girl an ‘A’ on her test!”
is incorrect. The objective tests were given objectively, by a trained staff, and graded by a computer.
Not only are women smarter than men, but women usually see a the trap before they fall into it, and men almost always fall into it then get all sexually insecure about it.
I love this thread.
Ugh, I don’t like these posts, not for their content, which of course, authors should be allowed to publish, as their content is not contribution to anyones repression.
HOWEVER I do believe:
People who use the arguments of more men have discovered this and that etc. This is grossly invalid. Until the 60’s, repression on women was so strong, no women would be allowed to education to enable her to become such a scientist. 99% of the time these arguments are belittled by our sexist and oppressive society, that they become completely irrelevant.
Men and women are equally smart(lack of a better term during rant). Say what you want about the way brains function, if womens brains did not have this same capacity, how did Marie Curie manage to research physics in such depth she saved hundreds of lives, she surely wouldn’t have been able to if women are biologically/neurologically disadvantaged.
Females are proved to have better grades in school, which I believe to be true, but IMO this is because of puberty, where women have become more mature by senior years, allowing more focus for schoolwork.
Men earn more because of societies oppression of women. Women are taken far less seriously in industries such a law, science and engineering, therefore have less opportunities for employment and promotion.
The question is of society, not science.
Please excuse me English is not my first language
I Stumbled across this page while looking for some good info on intelligence and difference between males and females, I read every comment and must say its very funny, and makes for a good laugh.
“The objective tests were given objectively, by a trained staff, and graded by a computer.”
That comment makes the entire debate, or article etc useless. Anything graded by a computer has to based largely on multiple choice, if not completely.
Regurgitating facts on paper does not make a person intelligent, actual comprehension of the data sets those facts are based on is essentially what would make a person intelligent.
Objective testing, has never been good benchmark for actual intelligence. Anyone who has actually done real generalized IQ test knows just how little of the exam is based on common knowledge and facts, and how much of it is based on logic and problem solving.
In short memorizing does not equal intelligence, tell a dog to sit enough times and eventually it will be able to do it on command.
Yes and no
That comment makes the entire debate, or article etc useless. Anything graded by a computer has to based largely on multiple choice, if not completely.
yes, that is what “objective test” means.
Regurgitating facts on paper does not make a person intelligent, actual comprehension of the data sets those facts are based on is essentially what would make a person intelligent.
They were not regurgitated facts. It is quite possible to design objective tests (mainly mc) that do better than that, and that is what we did.
I did not mention this in the piece, but I get the same results with ALL of my classes, and most are based on essays and papers. But those men who cant’ stand being members of the stupider sex will just complain that I biased the grading. Thus, my emphasis on objective tests.
In the end, men will always insist that the only valid tests are the ones that show them to be smarter, and anyone who disagrees with that, well, the men will just scream at them.
“In the end, men will always insist that the only valid tests are the ones that show them to be smarter, and anyone who disagrees with that, well, the men will just scream at them.”
I am a man. Explain to me, therefore, why it is that I reject the validity not only of tests that cause women to appear smarter than men, but also of tests that cause men to appear smarter than women.
What am I even saying? I’m not a man. You’re not a woman, either. Noone in this thread is a man or a woman. Women and men don’t exist. Due to genetic differences, hormone regulation occurs differently in everyone, and as for chromosomes, although the vast majority of chromosomes seem to be either XX or XY, there exist many chromosomes that are deformed; from this perspective, even a pile of dust in the corner of your living room could be considered a chromosome, but one so ridiculously deformed that you wouldn’t know any better. Sure, one could point out that most people fall fairly close in terms of hormones and chromosomes to one sex or the other, but since differences still inevitably exist, no matter how small, how can we say for sure that any given person is exactly male or exactly female? And if we cannot determine *that,* then even if we know that women are smarter than men, how can we say for certain that any given person is exactly smart or exactly stupid? And if we cannot determine *that,* then what use is the knowledge that “women” are smarter than “men?” If there exist exceptions to the rule, then it is a stereotype to apply it to everyone. I refuse to state that stereotypes are bad, because maybe they aren’t, but in any case, they are very painful. It hurts to be represented as something with which one does not identify. It hurts to be stigmatized as an oppressor when one does not oppress. It hurts to be stigmatized as a leader when one does little but sit back and watch. It hurts to be stigmatized as a belligerent, rowdy, impenetrably apathetic soul when one is introverted, cannot bear the sight of a bee’s head being crushed with a hammer, and desires peace more than anything. In the very same respect, it hurts to be stigmatized as unintelligent when the tests say that one is more intelligent than 98% of the people one will ever meet. What hurts more, however, is that this message is preached by people who know just how much it hurts. They want us to be in pain. They want us to be in pain because they see us as the men who did horrible things to them in the past. I say this to all women, and for that matter to all people, in a manner that I hope to be reassuring: that I have never born malicious intent against you; that there is no need to attempt to cause me psychological pain, because I am your friend. I believe in rights for all people, including all “men” and all “women.” I believe in gender equality not only in a political respect but in a social respect. I believe in gender equality in all respects, because I know that there exists an infinite number of genders, and because two is not infinite, that number is not only two. It follows, therefore, that I believe in your rights. I believe in your inalienable right to a sense of well-being. No matter who you are, I believe in *you.*
And, Greg Laden, I believe in you, too. Regardless of whether I believe the things you say, I believe that you have every right to believe the things you say, and that you’re doing a hell of a good job defending it. I believe that everyone who’s posted here has every right to believe the things they’ve said, but I can’t say for certain that I believe that they’re doing a very good job defending those things.
I am a man. Explain to me, therefore, why it is that I reject the validity not only of tests that cause women to appear smarter than men, but also of tests that cause men to appear smarter than women.
You are different from other men, Pantsman.
First of all I admit that there are some stupid men. Second when you say that there are a high rate of educated women in the UK university thats not worldwide if your facts are true that is. In my opinion I do think that women are smarter than men we tend to be more rational and forward when women are more passive on matters. We don’t think things through sometimes a woman always does that the difference. You can criticize me if you want or call whatever you want but I can’t accept that all men are stupid comment.
Does it really matter who is smarter? Men are superior in some ways, women superior in others, its a fact of life. Not to mention there are countless ways of measuring intelligence, to the point its near impossible to actually determine the smarter gender. So women outperformed men in a given experiment? Men outperformed women in 10 others, and then men were squashed in 20 more, and so on. Its inevitable that each test will be riddled with bias, so determining the answer is a pointless waste of time. Maybe we should just say to hell with math and history and replace them with sensitivity and sandwich making class.
BN: I agree with replacing Math with Sandwiches and all, but I think you may have glossed the tenor of this post. But that’s OK, so did everyone else who commented on the post! (but not those who commented on the comments [except those who commented on the comments on the comments])
ARTHUR! Personally, I would not mind it if the world population was 30,000,000, I mean there wouldn’t be so many diseases and there also wouldn’t be the problem of starvation in third world countries. As for “still eating berries” do you really mean this? Because if you do, I am speechless! Also, for thousands of years, men have oppressed ANY progress women have tried to make! I mean only up until recently were women allowed to vote and in some countries still women AREN’T in fact allowed to vote. Women have next to little historical trail because we weren’t allowed to, has that ever occurred to you? Or any other man who tries to claim that women are less intelligent than men just because there aren’t as many great women in history as there are men. Since forever women have had the idea that they are inferior to men, implanted into their heads. Men have productively held women back in terms of furthering their intellect. Women were burnt alive, at a point in history because they were “thought” to be WITCHES, WHERE IS THE INTELLIGENCE in that? Women have had to fight for their right to be equal to men which is ridiculous. Women weren’t even allowed to be educated, they were the last to have a bath in the family just because they were females and even now in some places they are the last to eat in their family. Come on boys, stop trying to hold us down, because in the end we are all people. I believe that people attract what they think and feel to themselves and what is intelligence really? How can we measure something when both sides are so biased anyway? I admit I am biased in this matter, since I am a female myself, however I’m quite happy to say that we are all equally intelligent, because there are stupid men AND stupid women.
They are not smarter than men. Men invents stuff and what do women do? Laze around at work.
Actually Jordon, since women are expected to do everything including housework, looking after children and bringing in an income, they don’t really “laze around at work”. I think your imagination is playing tricks on you. Or maybe you’re blind when it comes to seeing the world as it is. And “men invent stuff”, of course they do but so do women, we’ve just been held back for the past…forever? Yes.
1.Woman do better in verbal tests than men, have their corresponding parts of their brain larger, fact.
2.Men do better on spatial tests than women and have their corresponding parts of their brain larger than women, fact.
3.Men have higher levels of testosterone which makes them competitive and willing to consume hours to achieve something while women wont bother, fact.
4.Scientific breakthrough require much more spatial ability and obsession which men more of both.
5.Women are more social dependent, they value it more, thats why you can have plenty non-social males but virtually no non-social females, low grades equals to low social status, thats why women will have higher grades and higher number of academic entrance.
6.Even if women not only are more represented in academics than the past but they recently surpassed the male population, but still no achievements whatsoever compared to males, fact.
While the average intelligence is same, the part where males exceeds just happens to matter more.
Its part genetic part environmental, women emphasize more on different things than men, different priorities.
The old liberal excuse where males held back women does not hold up in any 21th century study as i explained above.
The old conservative excuse women being less intelligent is empty as of the liberals.
There is no “less intelligent/more intelligent”.
The OP needs to grow up so do feminists, so do liberals so do conservative people, racists etc.
We certainly do not live in a fairy tale where everything is equal.
PS. if you disagree with these dont blame me, blame the countless studies that have done by scientists/researchers(including women) that indicate and agree with these.
Before you address to me read this.
http://tinyurl.com/43hms57
Thanks for your perspective. Of course, if I’m right, it might be hard for you to understand this.
Ah! Beauty knows her
And Her Feminine Adoration in softness
Does tell em what if I lose the Ocean
But has this Drop form Her
To ask one or more to come
And if she decides to run for the Charles
Be it,smarter as They now know her
Silence and Waiting as I Call In
To Suggest in her Suggestions
One word:”Jot’em”
Thought this thread, was going to be serious for a minute,till I read the reciprocative post’s from Greg Laden,where he mostly tries to insult men who comment.I mean just take a look at post,226,”of course,if im right,it might be hard for you to understand this.” O snap,that’s a good one Greg,except if you are right, it might be hard for you to be right.C’mon Greg, don’t be an oxymoron.
The only thing being insulted is your intelligence,this coming from a man who ironically has a, PHD.
But then again,Anthropology,is just the slower, half-witted brother of a,Historian.
Whatever the reason for his conviction,perhaps a sincere gesture to women’s intellect,(try saying that with a strait face) or,flaterring women in a bid to get his dick wet, who knows?(maybe a women).
but keep up the great work man,some people actually find your jaded blog captivating.
Overzealously defending the small, perplexed mind of women,and the accrued hatred of your fellow man, will see to it that you go down in history as a great man,albeit more like, Hitler, than Einstein.
You see it really doesn’t matter what women do or think, because when they push their luck to far one day, they will find out just how superficial women’s liberation was, and how transient it can become.
Before I go just a quick word about comment one (where Greg,having lost his balls in a, unfortunate accident,found very amusing) about men’s genitals being “wrinkly little sacs that release stupifying chemicals”, (FYI stupefying, the correct spelling)otherwise I think, that’s a Harry Potter, spell or something.Fair enough it is wrinkly, but
it’s also low maintenance,doesn’t leak every month,and doesn’t look or smell like the Rafflesia flower.
WTF, thanks for the reasoned and helpful remarks! You prove the point that men are at least as smart as women!
Men are smarter than women. Women are given huge advantages, like free of being pestered. Anyone who force a male and a female of the same age and conditioning, free of sexism, male/female chivalrism, male and female ‘purposes’ propaganda, etc, will know that the male will do better.
P.S. If you are a feminist, I will kill you. I’ve enough of you shittalking feminists who proclaim all males unstable.
P.P.S. First of all, the female has four times the advantages of males. Every teacher is a feminist female (one strike against males) who think people should be emotional, not practical (another strike against males). The feminist teacher will try to discriminate as much males as possible (one strike against males) and help the females as much as possible (yet another strike against males). That feminist teacher completely allows chatting among females but not among males (yet another strike against males, as this will cause the females to have combined brainpower). The feminist teacher has made school a hell for males and a heaven for females. No wonder males prefer playing computer games than learning. I’ve learnt more through the internet than my school ever taught me. Seems like if males and females are given the exact same conditioning, the males will be triumphant after a test. All the girls have more brainpower than Sir Issac Newton.
Jordon, you’re fourteen and don’t even have a clue what a feminist is.
Jordon@230: Ahahaha! AHAhahaha! Ha ha… heh.
Oh crap. I just realized what this means for future generations. I was so hoping ours would be the last generation with rampant misogyny.
Jordon, for a girl, you make a pretty good argument.
Man, it is awesome that you decided to say women are smarter than men!
Except, it isn’t true at all. All stats show men’s IQ’s to be higher. Men win more Nobel Prizes, lead more governments, invent more products, and generally do more to advance human society.
So, although I love women–please stop pretending we are equal. We aren’t–and you know it.
Shawn, you spelled your name wrong.
Greg, you’re trying to communicate with someone who thinks that stating one group is superior to another is “pretending we are equal.”
Two years later, and this thread is still amusing.
That’s some staying power you’ve got there, Greg.
(…for a man, I mean.)
There was discussion at Scienceblogs a while back about automatically closing off comments on old posts, because they are often the target for spam.
No way. First, there are posts like this one, the Energizer Bunny Posts. Then there are those posts that while ignored since 48 hours after being written are still good and should still be read and commented on, like an old book on an old book shelf in an abandoned house … never know when someone is going to show up.
This is wrong. There are people who are saying men are smarter than women, because of a little test. No sex is smarter than the other, believe me. People may say, or whatever, that women have smaller brains, or men’s brains are more hollow, BUT NO MATTER WHAT! It doesn’t matter! We have different places, in which we are stronger. Men make better mathameticians, and women make better teachers? What’s the point of saying one sex is smarter than the other? Tests don’t spell out intelligence. That’s a bunch of bullshit. And the reason men were smarter a hundred years ago, is beacuse they were educated better. Get over it.
Women do better than men because they are dumber. A evolutionary brain disorder found in most smart children, which I call ‘repetitive relearning’, cause the cerebellum to have control over learning, thus decreasing the knowledge input percentage (out of what the teacher output knowledge). This ‘repetitive relearning’ also applies in work too, so women do better because they are dumber.
“Jordon, for a girl, you make a pretty good argument”
I am a boy. Yet, the fact remains that a stupid person’s brain have positive IQ, and there are more girls in the world than a genius’ brain power (IQ test). About “All the girls in the world have more brainpower than SIN”, I mean all of them combined. My IPad secretly deletes that part away, probably because it malfunctioned. It keeps malfunctioning. I can’t let my eyes off it, or it will delete a letter, a word, or some words, or even the whole post.
“Jordon, you’re fourteen and don’t even have a clue what a feminist is.”
A feminist, according to a dictionary, is a woman who fights for women’s rights to be equal to men’s rights. Yet, if the dictionary’s definition is accurate, there are no feminists. In reality, feminists want to get more rights than men.
P.S. If this post had any errors, spelling or whatever, it is because I typed it out in the iPad.
No, I didn’t mean that a girl is smarter than SIN, I mean all of them combined, and girls like to chat.
I am not a girl. I am a boy.
The iPad I used have errors, so it may only send half of what I typed. It may not even post the message, so I have to retype it and may miss certain important points.
I know what a feminist means, but I don’t feel like typing it out now, since there was an error.
Sorry for that major inconvenience.
My iPad sucks at posting.
Oh shit! The iPad scammed me. Could you delete this post and the one directly above me?
P.S. Yes, I am Jordon Ong.
Greg, I’m guessing that by the tone of your responses and your blog that you are either anti-male or you are gay. Most people don’t usually trash their own genders. I won’t ever say that women are smarter than men because I don’t believe that, however I also believe that men are not smarter than women. It all boils down to the individual and if we spend too much time crunching numbers and relying on statistics we get distracted as to what really matters. Saying women are smarter than men is a blanket statement, and unless it applies to everyone, it is also unimportant. So lets leave all the misogyny and radical feminist ideals back in the 50’s. I respect women and it is my understanding that they respect us as well.
Just scanning this blog. Boy, some men really don’t like being told what women have been being told in reverse for, like, 5000 years.
So misogyny and radical feminism were fifties things?
The comments on this blog remind me of when I was 11 and told my misogynist stepfather, who was training to be a psychologist, about some articles I’d read in Psychology Today. The first claimed that women have a poorer sense of the passage of time than do men. “Ho-ho!” he chortled. “That’s true.” The second claimed that women were more emotionally resilient. “No way!” he howled. “Where is the evidence? That’s a bunch of bullshit,” etc. When I pointed out that he’d accepted the first article’s assertion without question, he replied, “You don’t know when to shut up.”
How many times have some of the male commenters here easily accepted some study or line of reasoning demonstrating that women are less logical, less brilliant, more dependent… something that fits your assumptions and your self-image as men? Then a man makes an assertion of female intellectual superiority and you attack him, claim he’s actually female, he’s a “fag,” and a self-hating male, and some of you resort to childish attempts to offend through male-dominant sexual imagery – putting women in their place? You’re really kind of thin-skinned, for a guy.
Helen, the misogyny and feminism remark was not meant to purport that it does not happen today. I was mostly referencing the time where men did everything as far as getting careers, making laws, holding high office positions, etc. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t that the way it was until about the sixties and seventies? And you are absolutely right. We don’t like being told that we are inferior. I’m sorry that women have been treated poorly but I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s ok to bash any gender. There are somethings that each gender does better than the other. But as I said it boils down to the individual. When I was younger there was a girl in my class who was stronger than most of the boys. There was also a boy who was smarter than everyone else in our class. So to say one gender is better than the other would be incorrect no matter which side you pick. And lastly I made the statement about the author being gay and or anti-male because I thought it was odd for him to say that women were better than men if he was a man. I don’t know. Maybe women are better than men. Maybe men are better than women. I think we should get off of trying to convince one another of which group is better and focus more on trying to be the better individual.
Nobody is bashing anybody. I have had thousands of students, a large percentage taking fair objective tests. On average the girls have been smarter than the boys.
Sorry guys.
Also, one more thing. After scanning the comments section of this blog I honestly have to be ashamed of my own gender. You guys aren’t really doing us much justice by trying to prove that you are better than women. It is kind of sad. I’d expect that in a blog concerning the intelligence of men, that men would try to make themselves sound smarter. Usually acting like an idiot does not help your case when you are trying to prove that you are smarter…I can kind of see what Greg meant now. I only hope my comments aren’t coming off as uneducated and pathetic as the ones I have read…
My favourite intellectuals,
http://www.ftvthumbs.com/
Greg Larden- My opinion
I think at first point, there are a lot more dumb males than dumb females and that really contradicts the point of avarage in this ‘theory’. I think that history has given us examples of men being more practical as a whole and women being better at coping with more than two brain tasks etc. The whole idea of being smart is complicated in my opinion as I don’t think gender is down to intelligence as any individual can be extremely smart on their own compared another person. That isn’t proving it though is it. Nevertheless, you have a good debate, – reasonable evidence, though I wouldn’t really calling good test results as the only factor of intelligence. Think of how our brains process information, how they capture facts and daydream and what sort of questions go on inside the head. In that perspective, we don’t know who is more intelligent, -how are we going to ask every person on Earth that and let alone have the tools to do it.
So to conclude, I think that we can only justify ourselves. Don’t go comparing genders because in the psychological point of view, we have our advantages and disadvantages. I don’t know how you can find every single person on earth and compare the gender using ‘smartness’. Don’t use averages and test results!
Kind Regards,
Lord
This is not a theory, it is an observation. The point of an average is to address variation so your pointing out that there is variation certainly does not invalidate the use of an average.
Only people who are really stupid or really dishonest use history as a guide given the patriarchal nature of our past (and present, but it was worse at many times in the past). Do you know that the top universities in the western world did not admit women for quite some time? So which is it, are you stupid or dishonest?
Yes, being smart is complicated. But when someone points out that “males are better than females in X” people like you keep your mouths shut. When someone points out “females are better than males in Y” people like you can’t handle it and spew the sort of misogynist (that means woman-hating) sexist (that means biased) crap that you have graced us with in your comment. This a widespread pattern.
Reasonably good use of Google Translator, though! I’m thinking original language was Albanian. Yes?
Greg, how come it seems that most of the time when people comment you label them as stupid. Granted it must be annoying to have everybody preaching to you about your blog, I can sympathize with you on that. But was it really necessary to call Lord dumb? The foundation of his argument may not have been the most sound or the most educated as it related to stories from history versus science but I wouldn’t go so far as saying that he is stupid. And by the way I realize you make a valid argument. On average women seem like they are smarter than men. The only person in my family who ever graduated college was my mom and I will be the second.
If women are smarter then men, why is it that men has invented almost everything?
Are you sure of that Henry? It is likely that “women” (females) invented stone tool technology, which became the major technology that we know of for milions of years. Females probably invented cooking. It is not to much of a stretch to guess that women invented agriculture. Very likely in fact. Later, when men established a technocratic patriarchy, women still kept inventing things. For example, the use of radiation. But with this patriarchy in place men kept women at home and kept them out of the loop. Out of fear of their smartness, most likely.
you spelled stupid wrong….. So what were you saying about men again?
Greg i’m pretty sure,I dont have nothing against women, but in facts I’m very sure that men have invented almost everything,cars, airplanes,trains,tv,ect. when you say women probably invented cooking you’re just guessing right? is not a fact? man invented how to start a fire , so how can you imagine a women cooking with out fire? so my point is that even if women were smarter then men, they’re not smart enough to be perseverants, men more likely have bigger brain,and higher IQs than women, which may explain why chess grandmasters and geniuses are more likely to be male.
Actually, henry, it is almost certainly a fact. This is my area of research. Do you really think men invented how to start a fire? Highly unlikely.
Women have larger brains in relation to body size and better formed connections between the left and right hemisphere and far, far fewer problems at the lower end of intellect. Our remedial readings classes are filled with boys, almost no girls, for example.
I dodn’t know what a perseverants is.
Before you make arguments that label entire groups of people as not as smart as you, you ought to take notice of the fact that it is not OK to pull made up facts out of your ass.
Plus if we look arround us, women now dont have an excuse specially in this country U.S.A They have more opportunities to prove weather they’re smarter then men, and if we look among us, men still have a big adventage,in everyway,eventhough studys shows that female have more higher grades then males, but at the end what happens, where are they? are they still studying? or are they still in school? you get what i’m saying? at the end i see more successfull men then women.
Henry, is this the first time you’ve contemplated this leaky talent pipeline (that’s the general term for it), or have you simply always been content to assume it’s because guys are smarter? I ask because there is a wealth of information available to you about why this happens–assuming you really want to know the answer.
Henry thats not a very valid argument. I’m not taking any side on this but women and men are equal nowadays I believe. Men no longer hold the advantage. There are some fields of work that are predominately male or female such as nurses mostly being female, or construction workers being mostly male. Either one could switch and do the other job if they were trained and prepared for it. I wouldn’t put so much stock in your argument regarding men vs women in the job market, especially since the job market is suffering today as both men and women who graduate college are finding it hard to get a job. Another thing that is funny about that is that one can be “overqualified” to flip burgers. So if you just finished med school and want to work in the hospitals, you can if there are jobs, but if there aren’t any, McDonald’s wont hire you because you would be too smart. Not that this pertains to the argument, just an interesting fact I learned recently.
I agree, like i said i dont have anything against women, what i dont understand is why men are always ontop,in this category,i was searching for the smartest people of the world and above all,is a men, which is Kim Ung Yonga, three women and the rest are men this are facts, now doesn’t that tell us something? i’m an artist didn’t finish school, never went to an art school, but yet i have a talent born with that gift, that doesn’t mean i’m better then a female artist, i undestand that, infact i will feel stupid if i approached a female doctor and told her i was smarter then her, when i’m just an electrician, I think men and women are intelligent, but men is more perseverance, this is based on what i see.
I live with two females my wife and daughter, my wife is smarter then me in somethings, like in spelling words, but when it comes to finding adresses or puting something together i think i’m smarter there, but if women were more perseverance i think we wouln’t be having this conversation, so my point is there is no such thing as men being smarter then women or women being smarter then men, so in other words if your smart but not perseverance you aint going no where, if you have both you’re intelligent
An another thing i wanted to say to you logen, i’m here to learn about this, to give my opinion, but don’t understimate me based on how i write, or spell this might be your field as a good speller or writer, but if you came to my field as an electrician you will feel stupid, so dont critisize a person base on how they write or spell that doesn’t mean a person is dumb,i know a man that never finished school cant spell for crap but yet he have a boat nice house, and a chain of restaurant, he started with a catoring truck and now he owns like 5 restaurants what do you call that? a dumb man because he didn’t finished school? so dont critisize a person your putting your self low thats not smart thats why women think we’re dumb hahahahaha
I’m a bad speller myself and I am generally in awe of electricians. I myself never went to college.
Henry –
…but if you came to my field as an electrician you will feel stupid…
Actually, I would not, do not. With plumbing you need to understand that shit flows downward and to be careful about fire – the latter isn’t even an issue with the advent of PEX. With electric you need to understand that electricity flows both ways and how to figure the load you can reasonably put on a given circuit. While it is a little more complicated than that, the ability to read code requirements will generally get you through.
I am studying neuropsychology and linguistics, though I did spend most of my adult life doing repairs and renovations. It didn’t take me very long to figure out electric – or plumbing for that matter, though the latter actually required rather more practice (took a few dozen sweated joints before they rarely leaked). If you understand some basic principles and can apply them to real world applications, very little is likely to pose a serious challenge.
I would note that I was a fairly heavy drug user when I picked up plumbing and electric.
Henry I believe you took what I was saying the wrong way. I don’t think I ever criticized your spelling or writing style and if I did I’m sorry that doesn’t sound like something I would do. I was saying that you can’t really judge smarts based on the job market or anything for that matter. A lot of the jobs that require degrees are being occupied by both recent graduates and older men and women therefore theres less space in those fields than that of a fast food chain. You might actually find a law school graduate working a lower end job because they can’t get work, even though their are too overqualified for that job. Some places won’t hire based on the fact that someones overqualified which I find ridiculous. I have respect for your profession as an electrician because I would probably have 40,000 volts of electricity surging through my body because I cut the wrong wire or something. I do agree with you on perseverance. Intelligence isn’t worth anything without having the desire to use it just like it doesn’t matter if you are the hardest hitter in the world but you can’t land a punch.
I believe you were an electrician, what you think about wiring a 4 way switch, or trouble shooting? Now if i ask you this, i guess it will be easy for you tu figure it out,
3 questions
1:if you have 2 hot wires, and they’re sharing a neutral and is going to a junction box, what do you have to be careful off when you take those wires apart, while they’re still hot?
2.in the main panel you have 2 main wires coming in, each carries, 110 volts, in other words you have A and B circuits
whats the purpose of the A and B circuit strip when your’re rewiring a house, or even installing two new circuits in an existing panel?
3. whats the maximun 90 bends you can do in a flex line?
this is very importan to an electrician to know
to bad for you, you took drugs my friend, you had your reason, in my life i have never use any kind of drugs or drank alcohol, is unbelievable but is true, i always had the mentallity to be a leader not a fallower.
In my youth i used to hang arround really heavy drug users, crack heads, you name it!! but in my mind was senseless using drugs never found a reson for it, till this day still dont under stand why people make their life misserable using drugs dont make any sense.
In plumbing is not just about which way shit flows, there is also very important steps in about venting your lines or how many toilets and shower you can vent in 1 vent line, is also required to know many codes and you have to keep them in mind, in construction this are the most valuable fields
but this is not about construction, is about to really know if women are smarter then men,
and i havent heard anybody come forward to tell me or answer my question of why a man is ontop of the list on the most intelligent person of the world, when this blog is claiming that women are smarter? and yet i’ve being told that my arguements dont make sense, resently they have evaluated the most smarter person of the world, 3 women and 5 men.
Stephanie please give me that informtaion it will be interesting to read it.
IT WILL BE VERY INTERESTING TO KNOW WHY MEN ARE ALWAYS ONTOP
Logan i guess I’m a bad reader too, i guess when you said “ass” that clicked my brain, hahaha i just missunderstood, you are right sorry for that, we’re here sharing opinions, some agree some dont thats just part of the balance to keep the world interesting.
“Is like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities”.
I didn’t write this quote but is fantasctic and true.
Logan i guess I’m a bad reader too, i guess when you said “ass” that clicked my brain, hahaha i just missunderstood, you are right, sorry for that, we’re here sharing opinions, some agree some dont, thats just part of the balance to keep the world interesting.
“Is like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities”.
One of these days Imma compile all the comments on this post that were written by women and all the comments on this post that were written by men and have some kind of contest between the two compilations.
One of this day you should invite MR. KIM UNG YONGA,to come and interchange opinioms maybe we can learn somthing fundamental, because this is not getting any where. he’ll be laughing at all of us calling us dumb fucks,
Greg how would you feel if you had the smartes man of the world asking you the simple question, who is smarter men or women? What would be your answer? dont you think that he’ll be like duhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
Henry –
Oh, I was most certainly not an electrician – the only time I ever did any wiring for money, was when it was very minor and was part of a bigger job I was doing. I have wired a few houses, but those were for friends or for trade (more accurately, some were for friends and trade). My point was, I am not ignorant of your trade.
To make my point rather better, when I was doing remodeling and home repairs, I also moderated a support group (for a few months) for people recently diagnosed with HIV, did some children’s programs through Portland, OR community centers and did lay substance abuse counseling – the latter while I was still engaging in fairly rampant substance abuse myself. The former I did because someone asked me to and knew that I was more than familiar enough with people with HIV to moderate the group (though the point was that it should be moderated by someone who has had the experience of being diagnosed with HIV). The children’s programming I did because I had time that I thought would be fun to spend with not only my son, but with other kids he might make friends with. And the latter I did because I understand the psychology of addictions and harm reduction extremely well.
Mind you, I am a high school drop-out who was working the trades and was somewhat controlled by my substances of abuse. That didn’t mean that I ever found ignorance an acceptable state of affairs, in the context of things that interest me – or which are important to me. I was rather better educated than many, if not most college grads when I dropped out of high school and have continued to voraciously consume new knowledge and ideas since.
This is important, because it is important not to sell yourself short, or assume that because someone is better educated than you, they are smarter than you. For that matter, don’t assume that they are all that significantly more knowledgeable than you are, about their own field. There are a lot of hacks who barely scraped by and you may well understand their field a lot better than them.
By and by, I am very definitely more a leader than a follower. I started engaging in substance abuse because I have comorbid neurological problems.* I wasn’t always so confident about this, but when I actually started being treated for my non-substance abuse related mental problems, the substance abuse cut out almost immediately. I mean I don’t struggle with it, don’t have a problem staying sober – most of the time I don’t want to get fucked up and on the rare occasions when I think it would be nice, it is essentially nostalgia.
Back around to this discussion, what I think you’re missing is that very few men would say anything if the assertion that men are smarter than women was made in front of them. Unless of course they were agreeing with it. And unfortunately there are all too few women who would argue with it and too many who agree. But the moment someone asserts that women are smarter than men, people – mostly men, crawl out of the fucking woodwork to argue how wrong that assertion is.
To be clear, I think that “intelligence” is such an ambiguous concept, that making assertions about any group being more intelligent than another is absurd and for the most part making assertions about individuals is nearly as absurd. I’ve known a lot of people who, due to any of a variety of characteristics, most others would assume aren’t very clever, who are absolutely brilliant. That would include you – there are a lot of people who make the assumption that simply because someone isn’t as articulate as they are, that person must be less intelligent. That’s a fucking stupid assertion to make.
So when it comes down to it, I think making the assertion that women are smarter than men is absurd. It’s just that my reasons for thinking that have nothing to do with beliefs in the intellectual superiority of men. Indeed, in the context that most people seem to judge “intelligence,” it has been my observation that women tend to be rather more clever than men. Every woman I have ever seen, who has been offered the opportunity to really express her intellect in the context of science, engineering or business has performed considerably better than most men in the same positions.
For that matter, every woman I have ever seen doing electric or finish work has performed better than most men in those positions. I am very capable with tile and inlay work, though I am not nearly so fast as folks who do it all the time – mainly, I assume, because I have never done it all the time. So on a particularly strenuous tile job, I had brought in a woman to help me – mostly, I intended, with the cutting. The problem was that this was a rather complex patterned mosaic and I kept making a particular mistake repeatedly – if you saw it, it would make sense.
The woman who helped me finally asked if I wouldn’t mind letting her have a go. I figured she couldn’t have any worse problems with it than I did and was happy to let her have at it. She had no problems with it at all, because she could actually visualize the entire pattern as individual tiles and could see exactly which tile would go where, to make the pattern come together.
While not all of my experiences hiring women to work on jobs with me have been like that one – indeed none have, they were always better than most of my experiences hiring men. I worked on high end jobs, almost exclusively and having people who could look at a job and if not perfectly, do very well at visualizing what the end result should look like. I have worked with two men, out of at least several dozen, who were as capable of this as any of the five women I have worked with. They were also capable of visualizing each step along the way. Even in the cases where they were essentially doing grunt work (which was what nearly everyone I ever hired did for me – I mostly worked alone and if I needed skilled labor, I would trade hours with other guys who were doing teh sort of work I was doing) this made the jobs run a hell of a lot more smoothly. When the person working for you can see what it should look like, even if all they’re doing is moving manure around a yard, it is going to go a lot easier.
* I am not, btw, excusing my behavior – I seriously fucked up due to my substance abuse and accept full responsibility for my fuck-ups. I am just trying to explain it, because too many people moralize addiction and though addictions have many causes, they are never that simple.
I do agree this is not getting anywhere. At the end of the day people will still have their same opinions no matter how much you or I try to convince them otherwise. Everyone has their niche and as I have expressed many times, it comes down to the individual. If there is a man and a woman that I’m looking into hiring and they have the same qualifications I’m going to look at the more subtle things about them such as personal hygiene and their attitude.
Sorry Henry, I forgot about your “questions.” They were all rather absurd, though ironically, I actually have a circuit in my living space (due to my brother’s fucked up wiring) that shares a ground with another circuit. The non-grounded circuit was an existing light circuit and though I explicitly told him not to tap that line for the lights in my kitchen, he used it anyways – though he kindly tapped it and ran 14/2 to the actual fixture. So I didn’t know he had done that until I replaced a ballast and finally decided to troubleshoot the circuit. Tapping the circuit that he was supposed to tie into to begin with would have required trashing a great deal of my ceiling and a wall – so we just dropped a ground down to an outlet that was in the same wall cavity and tied to it there.
As for four way switches and troubleshooting, I know what a four way circuit should look like and if pressed, I am sure that I could actually install one. But my general preference would be to have an electrician install it. Being capable isn’t the same as being nearly efficient enough. Unfortunately, I am all too familiar with troubleshooting. My brother wired nearly half of my living space and screwed a hell of a lot of it up. He did some really weird shit and the whole mess is complicated by my dad’s decision to use metal studs (I am now an only parent of two boys and a student, so we built an apartment in my parent’s basement). My brother was all about making the romex stretch and this meant that the frame actually cut through the insulation on a couple of circuits. This meant ripping into one wall and running the circuit out of the box and into another outlet on the circuit and means that we only have two functional outlets in the bedroom.
I have spent all too many hours fixing his mistakes and oddities (he installed a GFCI for every outlet in the kitchen – running each one off the one before and screwing up two of them). He also tried to use existing two strand in a couple of places, grounding outlets to the frame. This became a problem because one of his outlets that was grounded this way had the ground come into contact with the hotwire and another circuit in the same wall was grounded to both the frame and the box – so we had five walls that had current running through them. We were extremely close to ripping down a hell of a lot of drywall, when a friend who was helping me actually figured it out – I’m not bad with troubleshooting shit, but he’s exceptional, especially considering he’s a painter by primary trade.
I have to be honest with you, this post is by far the most retarded piece I’ve ever read when it comes to
presenting an argument that women are “smarter” than men. What really cracks me up is this little gem:
“among the smartest people there is no emperical evidence that women are underrepresented”
Well, given any academic or intellectual discipline, the vast majority of important contributors have
been and still are MEN! The is no “patriarchal conspiracy” to suppress or ignore all the women who
contributed to the advancement of knowledge and ideas, there simply aren’t nearly as many as the smartest
people in this world are obviously men. Intellectual potential, and actual contributions are not as neatly correlated
with academic performance as you would like to believe. Your argument against the alternative hypotheses as to
why women are currently more successfuly in American schools than men is pretty much a moot point my friend.
-Anton
duwayne, the answer for my questions is ubsurd?, or you just couldnt figure it out what the hell i was talking about? when you confront someone in a subject like this about electrical, if you know the answer you will definately answer it right away, if you dont know, the first shit that comes throught your mind is making a stupid comment like this one “They were all rather absurd,i didn’t ask you for your opinion about my questions, i asked you to give three simple answers that you probably didn’t know, you wrote almost an intire story about a trouble shooting at your house , but yet couldn’t answer three short questions, perhaps i should answer my own questions to refresh your mind.
The answer for question #1 is never separate neutrals in a junction box when you are sharing that neutral with two hot wires. wasn’t it simple?
The answer for #2 the purpose for A and B circuits in a main panel is, if you’re sharing a neautral with two hot wires, you have to make sure that line #1 is on A, line #2 has to be on B, this is so that you wont overload a circuit.
and final question was the easiest one of all, yes only 3 90 degree bends you can do on a flex, this is a code
IN OTHER WORDS ABSURD BUT YET HARD TWO ANSWER
DuWayne, I think you’ve been outsmarted.
I suspect Henry is a girl pretending to be a boy. I say this because Henry seems pretty smart.
Duwayne my point is, you said that you wouldnt feel stupid if you enter my field as an electrician, i was just trying to prove my point, there is a lot of so called electricians outhere, but they don’t know shit, and i’ved seen splising wires togetehr without a proper box, taping wires together inside metal conduits by so called electricias, and so on, i’m not here to teach how to do electrical, or who knows more, my point is that everybody has their on capacity to preformed what ever they want, as long as they’re perseverance, a female could be an electrician they could be framers anything they want, but the fact is that they don’t put their skills in acctions, i heard a lady here saying she was in martial arts, but yet if we put that women in a ring with a man in the same category she will get her ass wooped, thats when reality kicks in wether women are smarter it could be a fact but is still a big question there , anybody can speculate but fundation is a key for any conversation, if you build a bulding without a fundation is going to fall. in other words no matter what people thinks about women being smarter , if is based on a just college exams and someone theory i belive it doens’t count is not based on anything just an especulations. actions speak louder then words,
All right, I must plead ignorance, I thought you were fucking with me.
How exactly would one separate a single neutral wire?
When would you actually share a neutral with two hot wires? That seems rather absurd, because I have never come across a situation where one would do that. (my experience is almost entirely with residential)
Are you talking about flexible conduit? If so, I have never heard it referred to as “flex line.” Also, I only ever use flexible conduit in situations where I won’t have any nineties – if I am making turns I use hard conduit every time. If I use flexible conduit, it is for situations where, for example, you might be running across a joist cavity that has a round duct running through it. I really don’t care for how flexible conduit looks and am neurotic enough about appearances, that I concern myself with shit no one else is likely to see – or if they do, they won’t really see it.
That said, I rarely do anything that requires conduit. I wire garbage disposals and insta-hot fixtures with conduit and actually replaced the wiring and installed conduit in a crawl space that had been invaded by racoons – one of whom chewed through the romex and made quite the mess of things. I also installed the conduit for and pulled the strands for a secondary box in a detached garage, but flat refused to actually connect the damned thing. I am willing to do many things on my own and again, I know how to wire a secondary box – but that is one of those things that I just won’t touch. Knowing how to do something, doesn’t equal having the ability to do so safely.
All in all, I rather embarrassingly have to, indeed, admit my ignorance about aspects of your profession. That doesn’t detract from my actual point though. It is all too easy to assume that because someone else appears to have a greater understanding of a given subject, because that happens to be their field, doesn’t mean they actually do.
And i’m not trying to kiss gregs ass but what i’m going to say is base on this blog, The reason greg made this blog is because he is a teacher, a field that i dont know shit about, i’m an ignorant in this erea, he says he is being a teacher i don’t know if is a school, college or the university, he is defending his way of thinking base on facts that he has experience through out his carreer with female students, so in a way i agree with him thinking like that, thats just something he backs up is not that he hates men, in his mind this is a fact based on his experience, is like if someone came and told me how to wire a panel and dont know shit about electrical, and start telling me that their is no need for a gronund rod in a panel when i know perfectly that it does need it.
so wether he is right or wrong in his mind, he is right and no one is going to change his way of thinking about women being smarter then men, hes talking base on his experience
…but they don’t know shit, and i’ved seen splising wires togetehr without a proper box, taping wires together inside metal conduits by so called electricias…
And that rather nicely meshes with my point, as I have seen this sort of work and replaced that sort of work – work that was originally performed by licensed electricians.
anybody can speculate but fundation is a key for any conversation, if you build a bulding without a fundation is going to fall. in other words no matter what people thinks about women being smarter , if is based on a just college exams and someone theory i belive it doens’t count is not based on anything just an especulations. actions speak louder then words,
You’re missing the point, the issue is that it is rather easy, based on the same sorts of “evidence” we used to look at and assume that men were smarter than women and assume that women are smarter than men – at least now. The same comparison can be made of the “evidence” that would imply that men are better than math at women.
When Greg wrote this post, there was a big meme going around about men being better at math than women (and being generally smarter than women). The so called evidence that supported that assertion, was the same sort of evidence that Greg uses in this post to support the assertion that women are smarter than men.
Take a look at Anton Feichtmeir’s little tirade up above. He is making the bald assertion that MEN!!1 are smarter than women and using absolutely ridiculous reasoning to do so. Men are smarter because they have accomplished more and the accomplishments of women can’t be weighed against those to argue that that is not true. That is what his comment boils down to.
I believe that you’ve involved yourself in this conversation on good faith. So I want to ask you this question in good faith, not as an asshole. You have made several comments on this thread now, over the last couple of days. When was the last time you argued against the assertion that men are smarter than women? It is made far more frequently.
duwayne are you acting dumb or your just dumb? do you know the reason for a junction box? what the whole purpose to have a box in an electrical field? isn’t it yo make splices? so basically if i said three wires one neutral and two hots, is abious for any electrician to know what i’m talking about, and when i said seperate is almost likely im talking about taking that plastic little thing so called WIRE NUT twisted together with the wires,duhhh or do i have to send you a picture of how a 4s box looks like or junction box? whats the whole purpose to have a junction box when you run a straight conduit or a homerun? or perhaps to a cealing light box? and actually that too could be use as a junction box, so read very careful my question before you make a remark. junction is a anything where to ends meet or starts, am i correct, or perhaps something that makes conecctions,
In a perfect world!!! yes conduit is the perfect word for flex. But in this case as long as i been working in cosntruction we use that word “line” as pipe line, copper line, galvanized line, string line, flex line, if you havent worked on this field please dont try to correct me, you’re making your self look dumb,
Henry –
I am not trying to correct you, I was trying to figure out what you are talking about – after admitting ignorance.
On lingo, I have noted – having worked in eleven regions of three states, that lingo varies a great deal with geography. If I asked you to grab the pic off the truck and you came back to tell me you didn’t see a pick axe, I wouldn’t say you were dumb because you didn’t realized I meant the engineered plank on my ladder rack.
When I have heard electricians I have worked around refer to “line” in the context of electric work, they are talking about some sort of conductive line. If they are talking about conduit, they call it conduit, or in the case of a northern MI electrician , pipe. When I asked if you meant conduit, I was asking in good faith and my assumption you were talking about some sort of conductive line is why I assumed you were fucking with me with your questions.
…so basically if i said three wires one neutral and two hots, is abious for any electrician to know what i’m talking about…
And I told you I am not an electrician, subsequently admitting ignorance. Not something I have experience with – at least with junctions.
and when i said seperate is almost likely im talking about taking that plastic little thing so called WIRE NUT twisted together with the wires,duhhh or do i have to send you a picture of how a 4s box looks like or junction box?
Sorry, I wasn’t reading clearly enough.
Greg, you are absolutely correct. Women in your classroom ARE smarter than the men…in your classroom.
Men earn more advanced degrees than women, men get higher grades in their junior and senior years of college, and men have a higher average IQ than women (by 3.7 points).
This is also interesting–taller people have a higher average IQ (about 0.4 points per inch). Men are, on average, 5 inches taller than women–which would theoretically translate to an additional 2 IQ points based off of height ALONE.
Oh yeah, more women drop out of college than men.
Greg, you are absolutely correct. Women in your classroom ARE smarter than the men…in your classroom.
Men earn more advanced degrees than women, men get higher grades in their junior and senior years of college, and men have a higher average IQ than women (by 3.7 points).
This is also interesting–taller people have a higher average IQ (about 0.4 points per inch). Men are, on average, 5 inches taller than women–which would theoretically translate to an additional 2 IQ points based off of height ALONE.
Oh yeah, more women drop out of college than men.
men have a higher average IQ than women (by 3.7 points).
I am not impressed by your cherry picked data. See Neisser et al. Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns. 1996. Am. Phychologist.
Regarding career and degree related biases, there are lots of sources I could refer you to which show that this is not a difference between males and female’s abilities, but rather, bias against females in the system. You might start wiht Cox and Harquail’s 1991 study “Career Paths and Career Success in the Early Career Stages of Male and Female MBA’s to get a handle on the literature. (Check out the citation therein).
Now, I have a question for you: Why is it important to you that men be perceived of as smarter than women?
Hello again. Thanks for your reply. History is written by the victors, I am no Vitor, right! So you can’t say that I am using history to my advantage, History is just a story and a legend. However for you to regard me as ‘Stupid’/Dishonest, which I am clearly not, offends me. You cannot use the ‘term’ intelligence. Intelligence IS A THEORY, it is, as I said before, how the mind would process information and knowledge. Everyone has completely different intelligence as our brains are all diferent (evident by our different behaviors), it varies on the PERSON, not the gender. I think a lot of the people here think about smartness as this ‘I can work out puzzles or, I got a very high test score ect’ It is not . Yes, I agree with you, women had no chance to be in universities but now in the modern day, we will develop new methods (Like brainchemicals that, when unbalanced, cause OCD and Depression, perhaps measure that and find out if Men or Women have a different balance etc so they do ‘better’ at tests) and find out who is the best ‘test-wise’. My opinion has actually changed. I am now on nobodies side. I can only advise that using things like “You are stupid” or “Revatalise that sentance” is just using aggression to prove your argument. I do agree with your statement about history.
Thank You
BTW Greg, WHAT evidence do you have that women “probably” invented stone tools?At least 90% of inventions, both ancient and modern, are the work of us MEN.
True, true, Men are good inventors, though it’s a bit of a gerneralisation to say that this means they are smarter, as indicated in my post, Smartness isn’t always tests and creativity. So yeah. Greg needs to be a bit more positive if he’s going to create a post about Women being ‘Smarter’ than Men and then going up to every male who posts and saying (Unless they confess to being less smarter)they are not smart. You used averages in the test, but averages don’t work in real life- You could find a cure for a disease and find that the average person had no side-effects when one of two- even more may have side effects. I’m only being nice to you at the moment, greg. You know you’re wrong and there is no such thing as proving intelligence by difference of gender,only the person. The rate that intelligence differs between an individual is probably the rate that every human is born and humans are being born every second, Greg. I suppose you’ll reply with a “Of yes and the average blah blah , you idiot” considering your posts in the past.
I agree with ‘Lord’, the point is, if you are making judgements about saying someone is smarter, what you are doing is picking an aspect about a person on average or what they do or how they do something in a situation and using that as evidence to judge them. Anton he is isn’t using evidence, he is using lies.
It seems suspicious to me that if women are more intelligent than men they have allowed themselves to be “oppressed” for so many centuries.
Greg needs to be a bit more positive if he’s going to create a post about Women being ‘Smarter’ than Men and then going up to every male who posts and saying (Unless they confess to being less smarter)they are not smart.
I’ll change my tune the minute a man who is not a drooling idiot comes up to the plate!
agree with ‘Lord’, the point is, if you are making judgements about saying someone is smarter, what you are doing is picking an aspect about a person on average or what they do or how they do something in a situation and using that as evidence to judge them. Anton he is isn’t using evidence, he is using lies.
OK, smarty pants. Give me links. Give me links to YOU saying the same exact thing on a blog post which makes the claim that men are smarter or that there are, say, race differences in intelligence.
Give me links showing that ANY of the multipalleted morons upstream in this thread every went ANYWHERE and got all indignant about someone putting down women, blacks, mexicans, or anyone. Just one link.
It seems suspicious to me that if women are more intelligent than men they have allowed themselves to be “oppressed” for so many centuries.
Oh look, comment of the month award material!
I present no evidence to back this comment, it’s just based on personal experience, but…
I think it’s quite possible that women are just more practiced at complex thinking than men. It goes along with nearly every single situation you could ever find yourself in being remarkably more complicated for you than for a man. Getting ready in the morning involves (for some, anyway), a cleansing routine that is both exfoliating and moisturizing (god forbid your skin isn’t free from blemishes and wrinkles), shaving EVERYWHERE, hair care and makeup. You have to plan teeth brushing and shaving “down there” around lipstick application and the morning squat. Breakfast is a calculated affair of measuring calories and comparing diet charts (again, this does not apply to every woman), and don’t even get me started on wardrobe selection, never mind finding a fashionable handbag that can still carry a briefcase worth of stuff. Travel routes have to planned around chosen footware and likelihood of harassment or assault (yes, those are every day concerns for us). Our day is filled with the need to out-perfrom our male counterparts just to be considered equal, while constantly weighing the expectations placed upon us against our rights or entitlements. Someone cracks a sexist joke and you must engage in an instant yet involved debate with yourself over whether to risk being called an over-sensitive “Feminazi” for calling him out, or laughing along to prove you’re “one of the boys.” You have to ask yourself if wearing the heels and hose confirms to the male standard of female attractiveness, or if you should embrace your choice to wear whatever you damn well want. Do you eat a salad for lunch? You must keep your figure, but you don’t want the others to laugh at you for being “girly”. If you have a genuine disagreement with a female co-worker, you have to navigate the situation without hearing the “catfight” calls. Do you brag about how much you love the Daily Show, or do you admit to watching “Sex and the City”? “I’m a woman, and I HATE that show,” someone says, as if you’re somehow holding women back for liking it. As if there’s a new expectation- the homemakers of the future will be “just like the boys!” Are you falling into the patriarchal trap by adhering to the female norm? What is the norm, anyway? What do you say if your friends invite you to a pole-dancing class? Is it okay to be attracted to a hot guy, or does that make you a slut? And it’s not even the end of the day yet…
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the constant processing and calculation that must occur inside the female mind at all times just to navigate the world. And this is on the good day.
My impression of the male version is “wake up, shave, shit, eat, drink coffee (though he probably got more sleep than she did), go to work, be king of the castle all day long and assume that everyone is like me, be completely accepted for who I am, go home, eat whatever I want, sleep.” I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but you simply don’t have the constant deconstruction of yourself, your life, and your place in society as we do, not to mention the same day-to-day worries. Standards are different, expectations are different, and we have to work four times as hard just to keep on equal footing.
They say the brain is like a muscle, requiring excercise to keep in tip-top shape.
With this kind of constant overwhelming use, woman should quite frankly be geniuses.
With this kind of constant overwhelming use, woman should quite frankly be geniuses.
That’s been my experience.
Alright, This time I’ve given time to read your whole blog, I think that you are tired of all these posts from random people to be honest. I mean no offence. I am a respectful person, from England (Not USA!) and reading your comments seems to be like you’re attacking people personally, not debatably. Of course I WOULD AGREE with the fact that there are more ‘dumb’ men that women, that may re-enforce your argument but when it comes to being a genius, I’m going to have a little go at science. Now, there are SOME ways of comparing gender intelligence of a genius. Generally, people with asperges syndrome have more extensive knowledge on one area (I have asperges, very complicated disorder with unnoticable symptoms)and have a higher IQ on average (Above 75 is a definate), and overall, Men give greater signs of Asperges and… (http://www.autismtoday.com/articles/Aspergers_in_women.htm) The majority are males. Though this shows nothing, intelligence wise (As it is IQ), it proves Men could be better at IQ. Don’t listen to all these idiots saying ‘What about Einstein’, listen to the people who think through what YOU say.
***It seems suspicious to me that if women are more intelligent than men they have allowed themselves to be “oppressed” for so many centuries.***
***Oh look, comment of the month award material!***
No need for banal antagonism. If you have a counter point to offer, I will listen and consider it.
Really, Johnny, you can’t think of a single group held up as an example of high intelligence that was ever “oppressed” for centuries? What a guy.
No need for banal antagonism. If you have a counter point to offer, I will listen and consider it.
A counter point to blaming the victim: How about NOT blaming the victim?
Well, it makes more sense to me that women have different interests than men. If male oppression was the answer to the lack of female pioneers, it would mean that all women, across all all cultures, and for all of our recorded history have been oppressed. While this is most certainly true of some cultures, I have a hard time accepting it is true for all.
Most women, throughout most cultures,throughout most of our recorded history have met with some degree of oppression, so you may be onto something there Johnny!
Johnny, what is your basis for saying that? Have you read any ethnographies, studied anthropology, reviewed the data in the Cross Culture Survey (HARF)? Or is it just something you don’t think could/should be true?
If male oppression was the answer to the lack of female pioneers, it would mean that all women, across all all cultures, and for all of our recorded history have been oppressed.
That’s a total non-seqitur: the conclusion does not, in any way, follow from the premise.
Oh, and pointing out how ridiculous your arguments are is not “banal antagonism.”
I wasn’t arguing with anyone, Bee. I was stating my opinion. And when someone responds to an opinion presented in all civility with a patronizing tone, it’s interpreted as antagonism. Patronizing another party has never positively contributed to the free exchanger of ideas.
Greg, it’s been my understanding that many of the important advancements in science and technology have been made by men. Advancements as simple as the wheel, or bow and arrow, or as complex as psychoanalysis. I am not saying that women have contributed nothing towards our technical advancement. What I am saying is that it’s been my understanding that men have contributed more. I suspect this has less to do with women being prevented from exploration, and more to do with the differences between the activities men and women naturally gravitate towards.
To blame men for the lack of female inventors is about as silly as blaming women for the lack of male nurses, wouldn’t you agree?
Johnny, who decides what constitutes an “important” invention? How long have women had the education and freedom of movement and association to contribute the shiny inventions instead of the simple, practical ones? What prompted you to jump into this discussion without checking whether your ideas had already been addressed in the nearly 300 comments before yours?
Johnny Oldschool: You really cannot engage in this discussion without full context–at the core of it is “white privilege” and particularly ‘white female privilege.’
http://www.womanist-musings.com/2011/03/stop-denying-white-female-privilege.html
“Feminism is such a white thing that black women are now calling themselves “womanists” just to get away from it.
Here is a link to a womanist website that discusses the general difficulties weigh in in with white female privilege, and those who maintain that pedestal for them–it really can be exhausting.
When I first saw the thread on Feministe, I had to think about whether I had the strength left to engage and what the effect for me would be. In the end, I chose to bow out because I felt exhausted. I felt I could do so without guilt, because I know that it is only a matter of time before something similar happens again and WOC have to spend their precious time educating White women, while they do their best to pretend that they cannot hear what we are saying. Whether it is Feministe, Feminsiting, or Jezebel, this will happen again and again and again. It happens because White women refuse to challenge their privilege, and it happens because blog moderators refuse to take a stand.”