Yet another "hard-wired" argument - from UK chess expert

[grimbletart]

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/chess/11548840/Nigel-Short-Girls-just-dont-have-the-brains-to-play-chess.html

Nigel Short, one of the UK's greatest chess players claims women are hard-wired not to play the game well.

Love this little gem (not). "I don't have the slightest problem (he says) in acknowledging that my wife possesses a much higher degree of emotional intelligence than I do. Likewise, she doesn't feel embarrassed in asking me to manoeuvre the car out of our narrow garage."

Wrong Nigel love. You don't have emotional intelligence, not because you are a man, but because you spend half your life hunched over a board game instead of of interacting with the rest of the human race. Your wife is bad at getting the car out of the garage not because she is a woman but because she is a fucking awful driver.

What an idiot.

Him not you grumble!

I don't think you can really call it an argument if he doesn't present any reasoning/evidence.

His thinking seems to be along the lines of: "Science says there are differences in brains" therefore "Women are worse at chess". Top logic there, Nige.

In fact five seconds of googling finds a study that shows that the difference in chess performance between male and female players can be explained fully by differences in participation rates only:

www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/PTA-026-27-1014/outputs/Download/1b19d40f-718a-437c-8aff-f871fb477ec8

No Harolds. You're probably right about my headline. I really had the "are we, aren't we different" general debates that go on from time to time in mind. Perhaps I should have said "non argument"

I wonder how proud his mother is of him. It was a woman that brought him into the world, he should have more respect. Little shit.

HaroldBishop I'm not sure if I would use that study to support the argument. The actual analyisis comprises little more than 5 pages with very few actual statistics

I would love to see such a study being peer reviewed.

But I do not think this one has (It has the feel of a undergraduate thesis type thing)

It is a study, not really evidence yet.

(If I have missed something, my apologies)

Maybe I should give Nigel a game, I am a bit rusty but have played at county level many years ago. DD could be better than me if she put some effort into it. Seriously we may not choose to play chess but that doesn't mean we can't play just that we are busy with more important things.

Wonder if he's heard of the Polgars?

I'm rubbish at playing chess on account of never having learnt how. (This caused me trouble at university - we had to program a knight's moves round a chess board. Had no problem with the programming, but didn't actually know how a knight move, and everyone assumed that that didn't need to be mentioned, because everyone would just know.) I have got it on my phone with the intention of learning to play one day, but I've never got round to it yet.

However, while I suspect I would be okay if I learnt to play, I'll never be brilliant, because I just haven't put in the hours of practice from chess club at school right through till now in my 40s. I suspect Nigel's wife would probably be okay at manoeuvring the car out of the garage, if she got some more practice in, but she won't be getting any practice, because he always does it for her.

However much natural talent someone has, they need to put in hours and hours of practice to become world-class (isn't it around 10000?) I suspect many girls aren't given the same opportunities to be in school chess clubs (which they may avoid, as they are often boy-dominated) nor to spend time on playing chess after that. I've seen reports on one reason not so many women are in IT is because their male peers were often allowed to spend hours more playing online games and so on, when they were expected to help out with the washing up and so on to a greater extent. I suspect chess would be similarly affected.

Nigel would never be more than average if he were only allowed 3 hours a week on it.

This I thought was quite a good article on his comments.
www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2015/apr/21/calm-down-dear-emotional-intelligence-psychology

partialderivative wrote - "I'm not sure if I would use that study to support the argument. The actual analyisis comprises little more than 5 pages with very few actual statistics. I would love to see such a study being peer reviewed. But I do not think this one has (It has the feel of a undergraduate thesis type thing). It is a study, not really evidence yet."

Perhaps the version of their (Professors Bilalic and McLeod) article "Participation rates and the difference in performance of women and men in chess" in J. Biosoc. Sci. 2007 Sep 2;39(5):789-93 may have less of an undergraduate feel for you.
www.pubfacts.com/detail/17331269/Participation-rates-and-the-difference-in-performance-of-women-and-men-in-chess.

These two professors have written articles for popular science publications such as Scientific American, and they have also written other peer-reviewed articles and books about the psychology of chess players etc., which one can google if their J. Biosoc. Sci. article fails to satisfy.

partialderivative wrote - "The actual analyisis comprises little more than 5 pages"

So, it's 2 pages longer than Einstein's 1905 paper introducing the concept of special relativity and his famous E=mcc equation. ("Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon its Energy Content?" in Annalen der Physik, volume 18 (1905) pages 639-641.)

It's usually quality not quantity that counts, even in science.

I await with interest Lise Eliot's pronouncements on the relative merits of the Sicilian and Alekhine defenses in chess.

partial - Yeah I know it's not that long and in-depth, but it was literally the first link I came across. My point was that he had offered literally nothing to back up his assertion, whereas in five minutes I could find some evidence to the contrary! I think that paper must be just an extended abstract because the authors refer to statistical results they have calculated that aren't in the paper. My statistics knowledge is a bit weak, I was more interested in things like your username!

Ebearhug - I'm pretty sure he has heard of the Polgars. He has actually played Judit Polgar several times. The result:

"the former women’s world champion beat Nigel Short eight classical games to three in total with five draws."

Lol

HaroldsBishop
Im sorry if I came across as pretentious, I think I knew what you were saying, I just worry it is all too easy to Google without looking at the quality of what we are reading. I do it far too often.

My username is just me being pretentious again

Vesuvia : Some extracts of the papers that you chose to compare

Einstein:
Let a system of plane waves of light, referred to the system of co-ordinates (x, y, z), possess the energy l; let the direction of the ray (the wave-normal) make an angle ? with the axis of x of the system. If we introduce a new system of co-ordinates (?, ?, ?) moving in uniform parallel translation with respect to the system (x, y, z), and having its origin of co-ordinates in motion along the axis of x with the velocity v, then this quantity of light—measured in the system(?, ?, ?)—possesses the energy.

Bilali? & McLeod
However, there is a simple explanation for the abrupt increase in rating difference and participation rates in the years 2003-5. In 2003, the year when a sudden increase in the rating differences occurred, the minimum rating which players needed to obtain to be listed by the FIDE was lowered from 2000 rating points to 1800.

Is there any value in trying to compare the two papers.

Of course it is quality not quantity, I stated that there were very few statistics in the paper linked. Meaning, to me, it lacked quality.

However, I must genuinely thank you for your link, I did enjoy reading the Professors other works.

I liked this quote from Bilali?
Experts do not realize that their favoured view seems so good because their attention has been directed toinformation that supports it and away from information that does not.

Confirmation bias in short.

I think we can all be "The (flawed) Experts" at times

Sorry, far longer than I anticipated

Nigel Short was one of the supporters of the World Chess Beauty Contest.

He's a prick.

"Mr Short defended the site and his participation. "How many women can play chess at a high level?" he told the New York Times. "There is precisely one - [the Hungarian player] Judith Polgar. If you want to promote women's chess on its own then you have to have something like this.""

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/from-a-pawn-to-a-queen-chess-gets-some-sex-appeal-517158.html

Nigel Short is (or was) a world class chess player. He is not a neuroscientist, or a statistician and doesn't have the skills to say anything beyond anecdote on this subject at all - anyone who did have the relevant expertise wouldn't ever say anything so ridiculously lacking in nuance. It must have been a really really slow news day.

On the actual subject matter, I wouldn't feel threatened by the fact that genius in chess is unevenly distributed between the sexes, if it were a proven fact, as long as treatment of individuals wasn't affected. But this xkcd strip is interesting.

DH plays chess and was pretty good when younger. He knows a female chess player who was miles better than him. Nigel Short just hasn't met any female chess players, or any he has met have had to deal with his idiotic opinions. Maybe he has met no new female chess players competing because they've all stopped due to his kind of intimidation, or they are just avoiding him. DH certainly met some first class tossers.

time.com/3828676/chess-judit-polgar-nigel-short-sexism/

Judit Polgar's replied in Time

I think the lack of time to dedicate to this kind of thing is exactly the problem.

This was neatly dealt with on Woman's Hour, the head of a UK chess organisation and a the head ofa neuroscience unit saying that the reasrarch is clear; there are more diferemces between women and other women than there are between women and men; previous studies that appeared to find difference between male and female brains didn't account for size, when you factor it in, there is little difference between men and women. Basically your brain is similarly structured with other brains of that size irrespective of gender. They were laughing, in a sort of indulgent way at Nigel Short, like oh, dear, he's massively behind the times, isn't he?

I tend to think that neuroscientists are aware of and work hard to eliminate confirmation bias in their studies.

The Polgars are an interesting cA&E. Their parents decided that they were going to raise their children to be geniuses at something and picked chess. They were deliberately trained from a young age. All their daughters were excellent but Judit is exceptional.

Which shows that gender is not the issue, but time, training and encouragement are crucial.

Which shows that gender is not the issue, but time, training and encouragement are crucial.

Noble you know as well as I do that is not what it shows at all.

It merely shows that gender may not be the only issue.

I think it has more to do with fathers playing chess with their sons.

Has nigel ever stopped to think how, if he had a boy and a girl, they might each be affected by his statement?

And then multiplied that confirmation bias by society?

Nope, thought not.

Partial - I'm speaking figuratively.