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You know the story, but here we go again. The standard account of sex differences in intelligence is that there aren’t any. Or not significant ones, or perhaps some slight ones, but they counter-balance each other. The standard account usually goes on to concede that males are more variable than females, that is to say, they are more widely dispersed around the mean. Although this is an oft-repeated finding, in some circles it is still referred to a merely a hypothesis. There is a standardisation sample in Ro mania which did not show this difference, and others epidemiological samples where the differences are slight, but usual finding is that men show a wider standard deviation of ability.
Against this orthodoxy, Irwing and Lynn (2006) have argued that boys and girls mature at different speeds, with girls ahead till about age 16 and with boys moving ahead thereafter, such that men are 2-4 IQ points ahead of women throughout adult life.
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/men-4-points-ahead/
Lynn further argues that if men are 4 points ahead, and have a standard deviation of 15 as opposed to women’s standard deviation of 14, those two findings almost fully explain the higher number of men in intellectually demanding occupations. There is no glass ceiling. Fewer women are capable of the higher levels required for the glittering prizes. Furthermore, this explains why men know more things. At the very highest levels of ability there are more men, and they have more knowledge, which is why they win general knowledge competitions.
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/sex-on-the-brain/
This, the seditious faction suggest, is just a fact of sexual dimorphism. Male brains are very, very much bigger than women’s, and each of the component regions of the male brain are bigger than the same regions in women, and also more variable in size.
Standardization samples ought to be good, and often are so, but they are not as good as birth cohorts or major epidemiological samples, so the latter are to be favoured when looking for reliable sex differences.
However, here is another paper on standardization samples confirming the same pattern of male advantage, though not greater male variability in one of the samples.
Sex Differences on the WAIS-III in Taiwan and the United States
Hsin-Yi Chen and Richard Lynn. Pages 324-328.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N3qokmbgctVMktN5pU8dUbrzMmHns1CJ/view?usp=sharing
Sex differences are reported in the standardization samples of the WAIS-III in Taiwan and the United States. In Taiwan, men obtained a significantly higher Full Scale IQ than women of 4.35 IQ points and in the United States men obtained a significantly higher Full Scale IQ than women of 2.78 IQ points. The sex differences on the 14 subtests are generally similar with a correlation between the two of .65. In the Taiwan sample there were no consistent sex differences in variability.
The authors say:
There are three points of interest in the results. First, in the Taiwan sample males obtained a higher Full Scale IQ of .29d, the equivalent of 4.35 IQ points. This confirms the thesis advanced by Lynn (1994, 1998, 1999) that in adults, males have a higher average IQ than females of around 4-5 IQ points. Males obtained a higher Full Scale IQ in the American standardization sample of the WAIS-III of .185d (2.78 IQ points). These two results disconfirm the assertions of Haier et al. (2004) and Halpern (2012) that “Comparisons of general intelligence assessed with standard measures like the WAIS show essentially no differences between men and women” (Halpern, 2012, p. 115).
Second, the sex differences in the Taiwan and American WAIS-III are generally similar. On the 14 subtests the correlation between the two is .65 (p <.001). Thus, in both samples men obtained their greatest advantage on Information and their lowest advantage on Digit Symbol – Coding.
Third, there was no consistent sex difference in variability. On the Taiwan Full Scale IQ the VR of 1.02 is negligible, and males had greater variability in 9 of the 14 subtests while females had greater variability in 5 of the subtests. These results do not confirm the greater variability of males reported in numerous previous studies e.g., Arden and Plomin (2006) and Dykiert, Gale and Deary (2009).
This study, on the gold standard Wechsler test, seems to confirm a male advantage in general intelligence. As discussed, standardisation samples are designed to be an excellent representation of the population on which the test will be used (with changes to make it culturally accurate), and there is no reason to believe that this balanced selection would favour males. Birth samples would be even better, but this is a good test of the male advantage proposal.
The Information subtest is a measure of very general General Knowledge, not requiring any specialist interests, but asking about the things which would generally be known in the general population. A .44 sd advantage on this subtest is enormous. The greater male representation in high level general knowledge competitions seems well founded. On the US sample there is almost as big a male advantage for Maths, and a large deficit for the digit symbol coding task, which measures simple processing speed.
The lack of a greater standard deviation in the Taiwanese sample goes against the general finding, as did the standardisation sample for Romania. Standardisation samples are not as representative as larger epidemiological surveys, but it is interesting nonetheless, in that it suggests some sampling restriction.
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Wait, how did a .44 sd advantage become a 2 sd advantage? And also, isn’t it the overall mean that’s 10, rather than the female mean?
Thanks for the interesting post. Worth noting that a big part of what got Larry Summers fired was presenting the variability idea.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/02/18/what-larry-summers-said
Here is how he walked that back later.
And here we have the thorough and convincing rebuttal they use to conclude the article.
Not a shred of evidence I tell you. I think her reading comprehension needs some work. Or perhaps she only reads things she knows she will agree with.
“those two findings almost fully explain the higher number of men in intellectually demanding occupations. There is no glass ceiling”
Even if women and men had identical IQ distributions (ok, they don’t) there would be more men in these occupations, because women tend to care more about people than ideas or things (using ‘devote time to” as a proxy for “care more about”. Rare indeed would be the woman scientist burning the midnight oil alone in the lab in her 20s, let alone in her 50s.
I had the pleasure of meeting a scientist/inventor this year, you wouldn’t have heard of him but you’d have heard of some things he’s worked on, and I toured his home labs.
Reading my post again, after sending it off, I had the same thought, and removed the offending sentence.
I had, as you surmised, used the mean of 10 for the subtest, and assumed that the .44 sd was for full IQ, which was obviously wrong.
Thanks for noticing, but I managed to note it as well.
She later debated the issue with Pinker, who was extremely polite, but in my view easily prevailed.
Who says nuclear physics is a “higher occupation”?
For autistics maybe.
No evidence for election fraud either.
But seriously, putting all of the the research and studies aside, what do your eyes tell you. If there are no differences between the sexes, why are women better than men at comforting children, and old people? Why are the “caring” professions like nursing, child care and social work, overwhelmingly female? How many of them want to be mechanics or plumbers? How many actually want to be the CEO?
The hard wiring comes early. That is why it was important to have mothers in the workforce to separate children from family ties, and now to push the gender fluid agenda into kindergarten.
Here’s the debate.
https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html
I wonder if Spelker still holds to this view?
I don’t get a great deal of that vibe from Elite Americans at the moment.
Thanks. Good to have the link available.
Thanks for the updates on this forbidden science.
The Taiwan study is really interesting as explores several dimensions of intelligence.
I think that the taboo of intelligence profiling is not entirely to blame on feminism or anti-racism.
Instead, the whole concepts of individual and freedom are at stake. The Soul, the Self, need to be kept sacred, or all our moral constructs will crumble.
Thanks. For anyone else interested, here is a link.
https://www.edge.org/event/the-science-of-gender-and-science-pinker-vs-spelke-a-debate
Her position in the debate seems much more knowledgeable than the stupidity I quoted. So perhaps she is not an idiot, but just plays one when making quotable statements for the media.
Some points I found relevant. From Pinker. He followed with the list of ten points.
From Spelke (contrast with the excerpt from her I quoted earlier).
From Spelke. BTW, for a practical example consider the utility of predicting the trajectory of a thrown weapon. Or navigating in unfamiliar terrain. Anyone think those don’t overlap with math and spatial abilities to some degree? Or that those skills were not more relevant for men than women?
This bit from Spelke seems specious.
Then she runs (not just walks) away from the point at issue.
That sounds a lot like realizing she lost on that point.
P.S. Did not see YetAnotherAnon’s link to the same place. Please use reply to make it easier to track conversations.
Once again science confirms traditional wisdom. Also note that we naturally become suspicious of men who show too much interest in children, because that could signal a sexual disorder.
Hmmm. I think that might overstate the case a bit. Wasn’t the traditional wisdom that women were too dumb for any sort of professional career?
https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/press-releases/majority-us-medical-students-are-women-new-data-show
Do you have any comprehension whatsoever of the discipline of nuclear physics?
I trained as a nuclear physicist.
You bet!
Rudyard Kipling nailed this one in 1911. Men fight over principles and politics; women only kill for relationships. His famous poem makes this clear:
I notice the US sample is not broken down by race …
iirc some of the old (White, heteropatriarchal) hands argued black females are smarter than (black) males as they have to run things anyway 😀
Any dope on that ?
Encouraging women to become physicians apparently misallocates wealth:
Financial Return Of Medical Degree Negative For Women?
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/008599.html
You mean the black women who can’t save money, fall behind on their car payments and have to find creative ways to park their vehicles when they come to work to thwart the repo men? Not to mention that they don’t seem to understand the concept of showing up to work on time in the first place. I’ve seen black women do these things.
Seriously, children should learn the importance of punctuality as basic stuff. My parents taught me that as the first principle for holding a job successfully.
My son could name all his dinosaurs. (He still can in his thirties.) My daughters would not know a Diplodocus from a Stegosaurus, and they are doing far better than he ever did at school.
I trained as a nuclear physicist.
Bad luck. It’s still stuck after, what, four or five decades? It’s genetics and all that that’s now the Top Science.
But are they in it for the money?
What does Kipling say?
Punctuality is the courtesy of kings.
And, some might say, the king of courtesies.
You guys have discussed this difference a few times:
https://www.rt.com/sport/512426-brazil-women-lose-men-football/
If so, that’s because it costs too much. You’re not going to exclude us from professions we’re perfectly capable of competing in.
I don’t like men doctors anyway. They’re often condescending and brusque.
If I ever need surgery, that’ll be different story.
As a Chinese male, I have a hard time believing Chinese women have lower verbal IQs than Chinese men. Take for example the gender breakdown of undergraduate law students at Tsinghua Law School.
I don’t know the breakdown for East Asian Americans at Harvard Law School, but it’s apparent that East Asian American women outnumber men at HLS. Tsinghua is the 3rd best law school in China and Harvard is the 2nd best in the US. Unlike the top law school in respective countries, Tsinghua and Harvard are better known for producing corporate lawyers rather than academics. Therefore I think there should be no good cultural reason for Chinese men to resist going to Tsinghua as it is a path to a high paying career. I think Chinese women must have higher verbal IQs to explain their better representation at elite law schools. Or am I overlooking other qualities that play a role?
This is a topic that should be deeply explored as I fear lower male verbal IQ is a major factor explaining why developed East Asian countries still lag behind Anglo countries and Northern Europe.
It’s the same in the UK, more than half of med students are female.
What I haven’t worked out is whether they’ve doubled the number of med students. Because the vast majority of female doctors go part time when they’ve had kids – some even drop medicine altogether if hubby earns enough.
Only the childless work full time to retirement, which while great for the patients removes yet more intelligence from the gene pool, a long term loss.
(There’s the mating problem too – there aren’t enough male doctors to go round, who will our doctorettes marry who they can talk medicine to? OK, in London there are high status mates available, but what if you’re working in Stoke-on-Trent?)
“If I ever need surgery, that’ll be different story.”
It’s a standing joke that they don’t need the bedside manner as the patient is usually unconscious.
Who cares if the surgeon is an arrogant prat, as long as he’s competent? Mind, the guy who burned his initials on his patients’ internal organs was taking the stereotype to extremes. (He’s still employed!)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/12/surgeon-burned-initials-livers-two-patients-fined-simon-bramhall-assault-transplant
And it happens in the States, too.
https://www.lifenews.com/2013/05/30/remembering-when-an-abortionist-carved-his-initials-into-patients-abdomen/
“On April 25, the immaculately dressed 62-year-old Zarkin was allowed to plea bargain after admitting he had carved his initials into the belly of Dr. Liana Gedz, just after delivering her baby by Caesarean section”
I doubt it’s the vast majority, but I’m sure lots do.
I think that actually makes a certain degree of sense.
Coronavirus was a false alarm, but what if there was some sort of deadly pandemic?
Having a reserve army of part-time women doctors would be most welcome in that scenario.
Oh, silly Rosie. You forgot to account for the limited number of med school seats and available man-hours for professors to teach their med students. The whole system has to be handicapped so women can pretend to be doctors for a while, just in case there’s a deadly disease that having more doctors won’t actually help in because there’s limited beds and triage space AND the sheer amount of relicensing and reeducation for women out of the profession for 10-15 years would have to get to remove the threat of legal liabilities and malpractice through ignorance.
It’s very apropos that you would neglect those details on an article like this 😛
A. You’re a liar troll. Trolls always give personal information.
B. So everything with you is “mememememememe” is it. I see. Solipsism is one of the main fallacies of nuclear physics.
Med school admissions in the US requires lots of hoop jumping like achieving certain grades, obtaining multiple letters of recommendation, extensive extracurriculars and volunteering with doctors and hospitals, etc. You can be brilliant and not get into med school if you haven’t jumped through all these hoops and spent hours “shadowing” doctors and volunteering at hospitals and stuff. I think girls tend to be more organized and better at jumping through these hoops.
They’ve also dumbed down the MCAT recently by deemphasizing the physics questions and adding more psychology and social science questions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Tokamak_for_Energy_Production
Buzzards tow their venus wagon.
Jean Paul about women in his book Ideen-Gewimmel / No. 1108
Even in medicine the ‘nurture’ trait highlighted by Curmudgeon above comes out.
According to the American Medical Association women doctors dominate specialties like obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, plus hospice and palliative medicine. Men prefer surgery (orthopedic, neurological and thoracic) and radiology.
Men being smarter than women isn’t really the issue. The reality is the former have a wider range of cognitive abilities therefore contribute a higher proportion of geniuses and the mentally deficient. This explains why more men are delinquents and petty criminals though like on race and general dysfunction bleeding hearts claim this is from ‘structural disadvantages’.
In tandem with outlier IQs men are more likely to defy convention and push the boundaries as mentioned by YetAnotherAnon in comment #27 because of higher testosterone levels. For example strategy flexibility accounts for why males outperform females in mathematical problem solving.
Years ago in a university staff club (“faculty lounge” in American) I joined two people for coffee. Soon they were arguing about admissions policy for the Medical School. The man argued that many female doctors restrict their working hours once they produce babies. Admissions should therefore continue to be dominated by males, else there would be a shortage of doctors to treat patients.
The woman argued that many girls were frustrated in their desire to read medical degrees and were better qualified to do so than the marginal male admitted. There should therefore be a much increased admission rate for girls.
I butted in and said that their problems could easily be overcome simply by expanding the Medical School and admitting more freshers. They both turned on me, furious that I had offered a solution. Their interest wasn’t in solving the problems, it was in hoping to impose their views on the Med School.
“Having a reserve army of part-time women doctors would be most welcome in that scenario.”
Agreed. But that still means med school places should have increased by what? 60%?
Amazingly, the UK is increasing its med school intake by 25%, and opening med schools in Sunderland, Lancashire, Lincoln, Canterbury and Chelmsford, but that’s because a quarter of NHS doctors are foreign nationals, not because of increased female enrolment.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40863448
(Wyatt – med school seats and professorships aren’t that hard to expand. Every year people perfectly fit to become medics are turned down, as it’s incredibly competitive to get in. I know someone who didn’t get any interviews in A level year, because he didn’t have 8 A’s at GCSE – he had to get four As at A level before they were interested).
Medical education is a precious commodity, because it is so time and resource consuming. A rational response would be to reserve it for those most likely to practice medicine full time for at least 40 years.
A rational response would be to reserve it for those least likely to bugger off to Australia after qualifying.
Sorry, no link, but I saw a mention of an article recently that said the female US medical students made a poor financial return on the cost of their education.
The sources of feminism and anti-racism are the same as that of the intelligence profiling taboo; the cult of equalism aka “moral relativism”. Once the moral constructs were deconstructed it only follows that nothing could possibly be truly sacred, including human life, freedom or individual dignity. Too much of Western morality sprang from or was intertwined with Christianity, so it had to be destroyed so (((other people))) wouldn’t feel alienated and to keep from imagining the faint hoofbeats of cossacks in the distance.
Item: medical schools in the US have been approximately 50% female since Bill Clinton ordered them to do so.
I butted in and said that their problems could easily be overcome simply by expanding the Medical School and admitting more freshers.
Without similarly expanding the clerkships and residency slots that would be a total waste of time and money. Medical school is not like “more college”, at least not in the US. The last two years of med school are when students are paired with active doctors in a junior position. This is an essential part. Once med school is completed, they are then resident typically in a hospital. This is also essential.
Medical school entails a lot of people outside of the formal schooling process, and those connections are not made in a matter of weeks, one doesn’t just turn on the machine casually.
Note the total disregard of women’s interests and desires as though they count for nothing in the utilitarian calculus.
SSDD from the chauvinist piglets at Unz, who will never accomplish anything worthwhile because of their total inability to make political alliances.
Apart from that, why just full-time? How about doctors work 80 hours a week. Wouldn’t that be even more efficient? And who cares about their quality of life?
At the time the post-degree training places could easily been created by giving fewer of them to foreigners. But that, you may have noticed, had little to do with my point. Two doctors were rehearsing their dogmas rather than seeking a solution to a problem.
And of course it’s not at all surprising that you would resort to easily surmountable nonproblems in the course of your ongoing attacks on women.
a great poem
Yes, this is a very common problem.
The chauvinist piglets of Unz can always be counted on to seek the most restrictive, draconian measures as a first resort.
A lack of interest in compromise is always a tell.
A thought experiment. Suppose a man joins the military and serves four years, and applies for medical school afterwards. Should he be denied admission on account of the fact that he has four less years to practice medicine than an applicant who has just graduated?
I suspect almost everyone here would say no, because they care about fairness to men but not fairness to women. I have no doubt there will be attempts to split hairs to show how that’s totally different because reasons.
This is all just ascribes of pretext for territorial men wanting to exclude women for reasons of naked self-interest.
It is as with soldiering – years ago a US Army systems analysis concluded that a woman was worth minus seven men (not that it availed them jack).
I do not have the appropriate numbers for the medical profession, but the question is reduced to:
How many resources are we willing to burn so a wimmin can play doctor?
Indeed, so maybe you should shut up, as you admit that you don’t even have a grasp of the basic facts of the case.
Hmmm. Is that what my pediatrician has been doing in the course of treating all manner of ailments all these years? Playing doctor? Coulda fooled me.
At the time the post-degree training places could easily been created by giving fewer of them to foreigners.
You are confused. Clerkships and residencies generally are tied to a US school of medicine. One doesn’t just create a hospital, or a residency, overnight. The issue of foreign doctors is not related to the issue of clerkships / residencies per se.
There is a finite resource, and if it doesn’t exist then medical school grads cannot become doctors.
But that, you may have noticed, had little to do with my point. Two doctors were rehearsing their dogmas rather than seeking a solution to a problem.
Could be. Or it could be that there was something you did not know or did not understand.
The project aims to produce net electricity from fusion on a timescale of 2040.
Well that’s progress: throughout my life fusion power has been pretty consistently forty years away. Now it’s only twenty. Yippee.
Most women are patients. So if you really cared about women’s interests and desires, you’d focus on what was best for patients, not on how many women get to be doctors.
Right, many of whom prefer women doctors, myself included.
First they came for the women doctors…
“The last two years of med school are when students are paired with active doctors in a junior position. This is an essential part. Once med school is completed, they are then resident typically in a hospital. This is also essential.”
I think most of us here are aware of that, and it’s not an insurmountable issue otherwise you could never expand the number of med school places. My impression, especially in the current UK context, is that hospitals would just love to have surplus Y4/5/F1/F2 people knocking around, there’s work for all of them.
Whether we take James’ “who gives the best return in doctor/years?” or Rosie’s “women’s interests and desires”, or even Dearieme’s “who’ll bugger off to Oz?” as the criterion for med school entry is in the end a political decision.
I’d just like to see it acknowledged somewhere, anywhere, that these trade-offs even exist.
I’ve known two childless lady GPs, both worked to retirement, one well beyond, whereas pretty much every female GP with kids is part time (or retires early or stops altogether).
Apologies James for diverting this thread so much!
Yes, a rational calculation as I said, and it leads to benefits for all patients. It places the needs of patients higher than the wishes of health care providers. The full time requirement would include women who wished to remain childless, or to hand over child care to others. A very bright woman friend of mine had two children but kept working full time. She used child care, and had a brilliant career.
You are confused: the US has nothing to do with the case.
Notably neither doctor advanced your objection: they just growled and returned to bashing each other over the head with their dogmas. In my experience that’s not an atypical way for doctors to “debate” an issue.
I thought I’d look at the British law which swept away many traditional obstructions to women enjoying good careers, the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919.
WKPD: The basic purpose of the act was, as stated in its long title, “… to amend the Law with respect to disqualification on account of sex”, which it achieved in four short sections and one schedule. Its broad aim was achieved by section 1, which stated that:
A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post, or from entering or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation, or for admission to any incorporated society (whether incorporated by Royal Charter or otherwise) …
…
By section 3, no statute or charter of a university was to preclude university authorities from regulating the admission of women to membership or degrees.
I suppose section 3 both makes clear that universities are subject to the Act whilst exempting them from it re admission, membership, and graduation. I don’t know who had pressed for the exemption but I wouldn’t be surprised if Cambridge played a large part because of its curious half-in/half-out rules for female students. Its folly was clearest in the year that a young lady had come top in the maths tripos and was solemnly awarded a certificate to say that her performance had been such that, had she been male, she would have been Senior Wrangler. FFS, as we write nowadays.
I doubt if Oxford protested much because it pretty much immediately did this:
Women were first granted full membership to the University on 7 October 1920 and then, one week later, were given the right to be awarded degrees.
The other ancient universities – the Scots ones – already had female students who could graduate on equal terms with men, as had the then recent University of London.
I’d just like to see it acknowledged somewhere, anywhere, that these trade-offs even exist.
To acknowledge that the tradeoffs exist one would have to acknowledge that there are differences between the sexes. This fact is a forbidden subject in our modern, scientific, rational, dogma-free world. If any doubt me, let them ask the former president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers for details.
Would they prefer women doctors even if there were better men doctors in grave, life or death situations? Or is the preference for women doctors just in non-serious situations, trivial check-ups and the like?
Do you support gay marriage? Some men prefer male spouses, some women prefer female spouses.
We prefer women for routine care. We should have women for routine care.
I already said surgery is a different story, but I trust women far more than men to know if a referral to a specialist is needed. Men doctors often don’t listen and are some of the most arrogant know-it-all bastards on the face of the planet.
If you don’t believe me, ask a nurse of your acquaintance.
It really disappoints me to see so many White men do exactly what politically correct progressives fear they would do: use differences to justify discrimination.
What I find bizarre about this is that we are fast approaching a post-scarcity economy. Fairness isn’t free, but we can afford it.
One wonders how far we should take this obsession with efficiency. Should we not provide reasonable accommodations to disabled workers? Protection from age discrimination?
What about due process for criminal defendants? That all costs money, you know.
Any potential constituency for the dissident right grows ever narrower. Even most Whites won’t be interested.
Is anyone in this echo chamber serious about accomplishing anything or is this a big circle jerk?
Good one.
For everything else, except a proctologist, I prefer women doctors. I had one nasty woman doctor (not surprisingly, an orthopedist, who was trying a little too hard to be macho), but mostly they’ve been great. Can’t say the same about my male doctors. 50/50 there.
Oh silly Wyatt. You forget that most doctoring is grinding up aspirin pills and giving them to patients with phantom problems. The one problem I have with lady doctors is that they tend to take every little ache & pain a bit too seriously, although that may be the times we live in. I had a muscle pull & they were about to have me sonogrammed for a hernia until I said, “No thank you.”
It really disappoints me to see so many White men do exactly what politically correct progressives fear they would do: use differences to justify discrimination.
Hysterical hallucination…
Is anyone in this echo chamber serious about accomplishing anything or is this a big circle jerk?
…do you have any clue who Dr. Thompson is, or what he writes about?
Paperback Writer
You forget that most doctoring is grinding up aspirin pills and giving them to patients with phantom problems.
Ignorant nonsense.
Just two of the most recent in a long series of exhibits. Demonstrating yet again why we cannot have nice things such as a serious, science-based discussion of differences between the sexes. Because reasons.
I see you support women doctors, but many here do not. Before you accuse me of being “hysterical,” I suggest you read the comments here more closely.
There is a reason why a woman would object to being called a cow,but a man usually is fine being called a bull. It’s not just IQ. Many female interests and abilities are either childish or trivial.
I wonder if the seeming prominence of gay men in fashion could be explained by sex differences in intelligence. Is the stereotype accurate, or is it just one that they push on political grounds?
Is there some IQ cutoff where we would expect there to be more smart gays (male), than smart women? Or might it come down to some specialized area of intelligence where men have the advantage, like spatial relationships?
> “Men fight over principles and politics; women only kill for relationships.”
Meh.
Talk to combat vets. Most confess that they didn’t fight for abstractions (God, Country, Logic, Reason, etc.) once bullets flew. They fought to stay alive. And to protect their immediate unit.
Many actually use the word “love” when recalling comrades-in-arms. Why? Because rarely in their “men-are-expendable-utilities” lives did they meet others similarly willing to die for them.
On the other hand, we often DO hear about Hell having no fury like women scorned. We rarely hear about their equals: dudes, tired of endless femshite, who send virago-vaginates to Hades!
Sexual dimorphism among vertebrate species is of two sorts: differences in body size selectively related to reproduction, and differences in morphology and behavior selectively related to increased niche size. Homo sapiens appears to have both sorts.
Male-female difference in body size is what can be expected due to selection for effective male-male competition in a moderately polygynous species and perhaps in a species with inter-band warfare.
Male-female differences in cognition probably relate to different foraging behaviors that together provide a wider trophic niche. Female gathering of small, stationary resources selected for processing speed, which the Digit Symbol coding test probes for.
Male hunting (and warfare) selected for the widest possible processing of tactically and strategically relevant information, which Information Subset and Verbal Comprehension Index probe for.
Understanding male-female differences in cognition requires consideration of trophic niche expansion through specialization of foraging modes. If psychologists would test performances on tasks that are chosen to simulate Paleolithic foraging specialization, they might find even larger differences than the summary table presents in Dr. Thompson’s post.
Some examples of sex differences in trophic niche.
https://bioone.org/journals/the-auk/volume-133/issue-2/AUK-15-206.1/Dietary-divergence-in-the-most-sexually-size-dimorphic-bird/10.1642/AUK-15-206.1.full
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1446430?seq=1
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/the-huia-and-the-sexually-dimorphic-bill/
Thank you for these fascinating observations, and the relevant links. I had not thought about this niche advantage very much, apart from the hunting and foraging difference, where I was unsure it that was still supported in contemporary findings about human sex differences (women better at fine details, men at larger picture).
What I like about the bird literature is that it gets us away from post hoc cultural explanations. Haven’t got the reference, but I think that birds who stay put during winter have larger brains than those who migrate away. They have to deal with more problems, if I remember the argument.
As I understand it, the problem is not really university capacity but post graduate training places in he NHS.
I used to be a complete utilitarian. However, since COVID I am not so sure. At the beginning of the epidemic I was very much about Quality Adjusted Life Years. Protect the vulnerable, including me, then let the world get on with it. But maybe a 90 year already on kidney dialysis does deserve the same care and attention as a 25 year mother of two young children?
But we use the term Forager now because hunter-gatherer primes us to see sexual dimorphism when it doesn’t exist.
Kipling, I think, was working a different angle.
Men make workable rules that include our ancestors, who often decided leadership questions with a trial-by-combat.
How often it happened no one is sure. But rules survive, so it happened often enough.
This means if your father, brother, son or best pal was killed by the challenger, you would swear loyalty to the killer, now your leader.
Bound by honor, most men would. Kipling seems to imply women would not.
The point is some sort of mannerbund has to run a system that requires honor and trust. Wherever feminism rises, honor bound systems resort to more legalistic solutions to make up for the trust it destroys.
Kipling might have been thinking of the Vedic epics here. He knew plenty about them. They also imply feminine confusion derails masculine honor systems.
“deserve”? Use every man after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping?