Men are smarter than women.

[Xarynian]

Or vice versa. Or not at all. I'm not really sure.

Here's the position I want to defend: I think it is quite possible that there is a correlation (although probably a very weak one) between gender and intelligence.
This may seem like a fairly unsurprising position - after all, there has been rampant sexism historically, so the fact that I (seem) to support a similar position may say something against my character. I hope this isn't the case - I think that almost all times people historically argued for the intellectual superiority of one gender over the other it was rooted in completely unfounded sexism. Hopefully that's not what I'm doing here.
Of those who are not unfounded sexists, it seems to me that many hold the view that, reproduction aside, the two genders are categorically equal in every way. IQ tests are calibrated so that men and women perform equally well.
I think it's possible that men and women are equally intelligent, but I certainly don't think that I could know that sort of thing without evidence.
Studies have indicated that there is a correlation between height and intelligence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence). Taller people are (on average) slightly more intelligent than shorter people. That doesn't mean that height is the ultimate deciding factor. It's quite possible that the smartest person alive is short. But there does seem to be a correlation.
There's also a correlation between gender and height. Men are (on average) taller than women.
Does this mean that men are, on average, smarter than women? No. Of course not - those two studies do not entail that. Do I think that it's possible that such a correlation is there, simply because of differences in height? Yes - it's possible.
Perhaps the correlation goes the other way. Maybe there is another factor that women have more of than men (on average), and it is more strongly correlated to intelligence. I'm not sure. All I want to suggest is that there could be an objective fact of the matter - there could actually be a correlation between gender and intelligence.

Do I think it's possible to run those studies? Maybe. But I don't think they should be run. I think it's quite likely that, given our social structure, doing those kinds of studies would do more harm than good. People could easily twist them to justify sexist discrimination when it is not warranted. Even if the correlation existed, it presumably is pretty weak - like the correlation between height and intelligence. In such a case, the smartest person alive could easily belong to either gender, and doing that kind of study could seriously harm their (and other people's) prospects.

Further, I don't think the above sort of thing is limited to gender and intelligence. Possibly there are some factors such that, objectively, there is a correlation between race and intelligence, between gender and certain physical abilities, etc. At least as far as intelligence goes, probably none of these tests should be run. But there is still the open possibility that the correlation is there. And (I hope) the fact that I think such a correlation is possible doesn't inherently make me a bad person.

[Oncie]

Men and women are both intelligent but in different ways. As an example (if my memory is correct), men are generally better at math and women are better at spacial reasoning. Could be the other way around but you get my point I hope. I think it could also do with the fact that men were out in school and working long before women did those things. Women stayed home to take care of the house/children while men did all the hard work that required higher levels of education.

Either way, I think women are fairly equal in intelligence these days. Slowly but surely we are seeing women in positions of power that were at one time fully male dominated. A few years ago we even had a women candidate running for president. I think a lot of it has to do with sexism and the fact that women received poor or no education in the past, which may have caused men to appear more intelligent. Though you always have exceptions to this, there's always someone smarter than someone else, gender or anything else aside.

[I Shall Grant You NoMercy]

Oh look, another sexist thread.
Woop-dee-doo.
rolleyes

[Suicidesoldier#1]

The correlation is .04% and in a few years it may change to shorter people being more intelligent, and the correlation won't mean s**t cause then "OH NO SHORTER PEOPLE BE MORE INTELLIGENT", even though we were just saying that all people were more intelligent by some statistically insignificant virtually incalculably small amount.

In any case, even if we assumed something other than completely negligible, the fact of the matter is people who are malnourished simply tend to be shorter due to the fact that during essential growing periods they don't have enough food to grow (in all directions, hence they are generally skinnier too).


This also effects intelligence- so even if there was a statistically significant correlation between height and intelligence it could be due to other factors and not necessarily a raw correlation to height.

As far as it goes woman were smarter than men in 2011 and 2001 but not in 1991, so what that means is that it basically doesn't matter and means nothing as it's all random data and random variations of .2 don't mean s**t.

[The New Wineskin]

I Shall Grant You NoMercy

Oh look, another sexist thread.
Woop-dee-doo.
rolleyes

Someone didn't read past the title. wink

[Demyan The Devil]

Okay, suppose we are on average less intelligent. Would would your plan be for us?

[Xarynian]

Suicidesoldier#1

The correlation is .04% and in a few years it may change to shorter people being more intelligent, and the correlation won't mean s**t cause then "OH NO SHORTER PEOPLE BE MORE INTELLIGENT", even though we were just saying that all people were more intelligent by some statistically insignificant virtually incalculably small amount.

In any case, even if we assumed something other than completely negligible, the fact of the matter is people who are malnourished simply tend to be shorter due to the fact that during essential growing periods they don't have enough food to grow (in all directions, hence they are generally skinnier too).


This also effects intelligence- so even if there was a statistically significant correlation between height and intelligence it could be due to other factors and not necessarily a raw correlation to height.

As far as it goes woman were smarter than men in 2011 and 2001 but not in 1991, so what that means is that it basically doesn't matter and means nothing as it's all random data and random variations of .2 don't mean s**t.

Possibly the data that explains the correlation between height and intelligence is explained by that sort of thing. There's also the possibility that taller people tend to have larger heads, and there is a very weak correlation between large-headedness and intelligence.
The particulars of this study aren't really important to me. I just think that some people assume a priori that men and women are equally intelligent. I don't think that we can know that sort of thing without any evidence.
Of course, measuring intelligence at a given time may not give you the long term facts. As you suggest, its possible for one gender to test better at one time, and the other gender to test better later. Maybe that's true. But I still don't see how, without evidence, we can rule out the possibility of a long-term correlation between gender and intelligence.

As to another point you made - I think that the fact that a correlation is weak doesn't mean that there is no correlation. A correlation of 0.2 is certainly not a strong one. But it's still possible to have enough data to support that a correlation that weak is actually there. If there were a correlation that weak between gender and intelligence, I don't really see how the fact that it's not a strong correlation supports the claim that there is no correlation at all...

[Suicidesoldier#1]

Xarynian

Suicidesoldier#1

The correlation is .04% and in a few years it may change to shorter people being more intelligent, and the correlation won't mean s**t cause then "OH NO SHORTER PEOPLE BE MORE INTELLIGENT", even though we were just saying that all people were more intelligent by some statistically insignificant virtually incalculably small amount.

In any case, even if we assumed something other than completely negligible, the fact of the matter is people who are malnourished simply tend to be shorter due to the fact that during essential growing periods they don't have enough food to grow (in all directions, hence they are generally skinnier too).


This also effects intelligence- so even if there was a statistically significant correlation between height and intelligence it could be due to other factors and not necessarily a raw correlation to height.

As far as it goes woman were smarter than men in 2011 and 2001 but not in 1991, so what that means is that it basically doesn't matter and means nothing as it's all random data and random variations of .2 don't mean s**t.

Possibly the data that explains the correlation between height and intelligence is explained by that sort of thing. There's also the possibility that taller people tend to have larger heads, and there is a very weak correlation between large-headedness and intelligence.
The particulars of this study aren't really important to me. I just think that some people assume a priori that men and women are equally intelligent. I don't think that we can know that sort of thing without any evidence.
Of course, measuring intelligence at a given time may not give you the long term facts. As you suggest, its possible for one gender to test better at one time, and the other gender to test better later. Maybe that's true. But I still don't see how, without evidence, we can rule out the possibility of a long-term correlation between gender and intelligence.

As to another point you made - I think that the fact that a correlation is weak doesn't mean that there is no correlation. A correlation of 0.2 is certainly not a strong one. But it's still possible to have enough data to support that a correlation that weak is actually there. If there were a correlation that weak between gender and intelligence, I don't really see how the fact that it's not a strong correlation supports the claim that there is no correlation at all...

Because after so many tests we haven't found one.

If there is a completely random correlation between the two it still doesn't matter.


We may find a correlation of .0000000000001% but becuase it doesn't mean jack s**t and becuase it's probably completely random it simply doesn't mean anything.

Thus there is no reasonable, significant or really even meaningful present correlation between the two.


A simple way to look at it is this.

On a good day and bad day you may find a difference of 2 points on average between I.Q.'s and thus a total of a 4 point difference to mean anything.


If you eat fish or not it may rise it slightly.

Thus anything below that cannot be measured accurately and is dismissed.

[Abdul Salaam]

I remember reading a study a few years back that had concluded that woman tend to have a higher average intelligence than men do.

However Men have higher numbers in the Far upper echelons of Intelligence.

(I.e using random numbers) Your going to have more women in the 118-124range than men.

But your going to have more men who are in the 130+ area.

Of course untill I can dig up that study, it's all just ******** balls.

[Xarynian]

Melly Kwistmass

Okay, suppose we are on average less intelligent. Would would your plan be for us?

I have no plan at all.
As I said, I don't even think the studies should be run, so (hopefully), we'll never even know which gender is, on average, more intelligent.

That being said, I think it would be good to recognize the possibility of an objective fact of the matter. Instead of blindly stipulating that men and women are equal in every way, we could simply admit our ignorance in the matter. We could say that, given how badly society has historically run given unfounded sexism and given our ignorance, it's best to ignore gender when it comes to judging intelligence.

In all honesty, this is largely a methodological point. If we think we can know that two groups of people are equal in every way without any evidence, we think we can do more without evidence than we really can. That's probably not a good thing - we should be conscious of our limits.

[Suicidesoldier#1]

Xarynian

Melly Kwistmass

Okay, suppose we are on average less intelligent. Would would your plan be for us?

I have no plan at all.
As I said, I don't even think the studies should be run, so (hopefully), we'll never even know which gender is, on average, more intelligent.

That being said, I think it would be good to recognize the possibility of an objective fact of the matter. Instead of blindly stipulating that men and women are equal in every way, we could simply admit our ignorance in the matter. We could say that, given how badly society has historically run given unfounded sexism and given our ignorance, it's best to ignore gender when it comes to judging intelligence.

In all honesty, this is largely a methodological point. If we think we can know that two groups of people are equal in every way without any evidence, we think we can do more without evidence than we really can. That's probably not a good thing - we should be conscious of our limits.

The thing is anything less than 1 point (really 3-5 but...) doesn't matter anyways so it's basically equal so who cares?

[Xarynian]

Suicidesoldier#1

Xarynian

Melly Kwistmass

Okay, suppose we are on average less intelligent. Would would your plan be for us?

I have no plan at all.
As I said, I don't even think the studies should be run, so (hopefully), we'll never even know which gender is, on average, more intelligent.

That being said, I think it would be good to recognize the possibility of an objective fact of the matter. Instead of blindly stipulating that men and women are equal in every way, we could simply admit our ignorance in the matter. We could say that, given how badly society has historically run given unfounded sexism and given our ignorance, it's best to ignore gender when it comes to judging intelligence.

In all honesty, this is largely a methodological point. If we think we can know that two groups of people are equal in every way without any evidence, we think we can do more without evidence than we really can. That's probably not a good thing - we should be conscious of our limits.

The thing is anything less than 1 point (really 3-5 but...) doesn't matter anyways so it's basically equal so who cares?

I think I answered this question in the last part of my post. The point is largely methodological. If we assume we can judge that the genders are absolutely equally intelligent independent of evidence, we are making a methodological error. That's not the sort of thing we can determine without evidence. It's good for our methodology to be established correctly, or we are likely to go wrong.

Aside from issues related to sexism, people have much less aversion to weak correlation than you seem to. There are plenty of scientific studies published that claim to support a weak correlation. They may not be as ground-breaking as studies confirming strong correlations, but people devote their lives to those sorts of studies, and the fact that they are published in significant journals seems to indicate that some people care.

[Suicidesoldier#1]

Xarynian

Suicidesoldier#1

Xarynian

Melly Kwistmass

Okay, suppose we are on average less intelligent. Would would your plan be for us?

I have no plan at all.
As I said, I don't even think the studies should be run, so (hopefully), we'll never even know which gender is, on average, more intelligent.

That being said, I think it would be good to recognize the possibility of an objective fact of the matter. Instead of blindly stipulating that men and women are equal in every way, we could simply admit our ignorance in the matter. We could say that, given how badly society has historically run given unfounded sexism and given our ignorance, it's best to ignore gender when it comes to judging intelligence.

In all honesty, this is largely a methodological point. If we think we can know that two groups of people are equal in every way without any evidence, we think we can do more without evidence than we really can. That's probably not a good thing - we should be conscious of our limits.

The thing is anything less than 1 point (really 3-5 but...) doesn't matter anyways so it's basically equal so who cares?

I think I answered this question in the last part of my post. The point is largely methodological. If we assume we can judge that the genders are absolutely equally intelligent independent of evidence, we are making a methodological error. That's not the sort of thing we can determine without evidence. It's good for our methodology to be established correctly, or we are likely to go wrong.

Aside from issues related to sexism, people have much less aversion to weak correlation than you seem to. There are plenty of scientific studies published that claim to support a weak correlation. They may not be as ground-breaking as studies confirming strong correlations, but people devote their lives to those sorts of studies, and the fact that they are published in significant journals seems to indicate that some people care.

And then we see proper evidence proving the other way around all the time.

We can say it's equal becuase after infinity years it would seem to be pretty much exactly equal.


You can go on to say how something might be off a billionth of a nano something.

But in the end that doesn't even matter.


In theory, in perfect environments, it would be equal.

So who cares?

[Ryu Kei Shou Kawazu]

Melly Kwistmass

Okay, suppose we are on average less intelligent. Would would your plan be for us?

i think thats more bias of a remark than the op lol.