Posts by Lilith __
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I was agreeing with you.
Oh, I missed that. ;-)
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to giovanni tiso,
One of the main proponents of “girls can’t do math” is Steven Pinker, who is about as big a name in the field as they come.
But girls DO do math. Lots of girls excel at math! And probably many more would if everybody weren’t telling them, “you can’t do that, you’re a GIRL!”
We all have different aptitudes. I’d like a world where we could freely explore what they are.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I don’t think we know either way. I think saying it’s nonsense is too strong as well. Right now we are learning a lot about how the brain works how memories are established how patterns are established and disestablished in the brain.
Jus to be clear: the bits I object to are the sweeping generalisations which say ppl can't do things because gender. I'm not suggesting sex/hormones have no effect.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to ,
This is a no hitting forum.
Gently caressing?
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Russell Brown,
I’m sorry, I really wasn’t attempting to start an argument and I;m somewhat distressed to have done so. I don’t have any view on Witelson’s social commentary, but she is an internationally respected neuroscientist (I gather her paper on Einstein’s brain, published in The Lancet, was regarded as a gamebreaker) and I remembered the part about responses to stress, which seemed relevant to the discussion, as did the other link about differences in the manifestation of depression. Which are, in Bart’s words, at the extreme end of the graph.
Oh, I’m not upset, and I have no issues at all with how Bart put it. As long as we can acknowledge that for most of the population their gender probably doesn’t determine their thoughts.
I’ve no problem with very specific issues being gender-linked,
but I have major issues with the pop-psychology “this is why men can’t load the dishwasher; this is why girls can’t do math” version.And I’m surprised that a renowned neuroscientist is speaking in this absurdly reductive and deterministic way.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to ,
figure out how to get the ipad to make a small q for the quotation code.
For shame! The iPad knows best! It should not be contradicted! ;-)
I think hitting shift works, though.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Russell Brown,
Sandra Witelson:
There were fewer physicists among the women. There were fewer mathematicians. There were more administrators among the women. But I think more revealing was that when they were asked to talk about what is important in their life, what their priorities are, there were huge differences.
For women, they are statistically more interested in having close relationships with parents, having a part-time career, living close to parents and relatives, period. Men, on the other hand, more frequently said they want to have a full-time career, and they wanted to invent and create something.
So my point is that the kind of aspirations that men and women have may be very related to some of the biological drives and needs that we have inherited as Homo sapiens over the development of our species.
This stuff makes me want to bite my desk, frankly.
Also:
No one gets upset that there is an innate difference in lung capacity between different groups of people. No one seems to be that upset when there are different motor skills and athletic skills. But when it comes to our most revered organ, namely the brain, people do not like to think that there is something innate, immutable. But the brain is an organ of the body like any other organ.
I'm not a neuroscientist, but surely this is NONSENSE. Brains are plastic. They wire and rewire in response to the purposes for which they're used.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Russell Brown,
I can 100% guarantee you that your neurophysiology – your brain – is different to Danielle’s, and that that has an influence on your responses to your environment. It’s a value-neutral fact.
Erm, I'm pretty sure the male-brain/female-brain thing is a myth. I can't Google it right now but I have read that idea being roundly debunked. There may be statistical trends, but that says nothing about any particular individual, and individuals are soooo various.
To a lesser extent, hormones are less dichotomous than people assume. Men have varying levels of testosterone and women have it in small quantities also. Variability is high. -
Wow, this discussion has come out really caring and civilised and fascinating. Thanks all. And I look forward to those guest posts, Russell.
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Imagine if Ministers had to take a pay cut every time they refused to front for interviews, or refused to listen to their own experts. Some would be in negative salary by now.