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.

I imagine those stats largely show Caucasian men as dominant in the sport. Would nigel make any comment about "white brains"? Or would he perhaps think societal influences helped make the USSR as was pretty dominant in chess?

Yet another person to whom I would prescribe Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences...

Huff, that was meant to be italicised.

That looks an interesting read, Hovis (or should that be HoVis?)

I found this review on her website:

www.cordeliafine.com/Delusions_of_Gender_Counterfire_review.pdf

I'm not sure I would buy a copy, but I would take one out of a library, I am a bit of a statshead

It's a good book, partial. Often quite cheap on kindle, if you can access kindle where you are?

Either is fine, Partial! HoVis is the intended moniker but sometimes when I'm typing quickly it comes out without the middle capital.

It's a great book. She describes lots of different experiments which I find make useful examples to bring out in conversations on the topic. A friend gave it to me and DH as a wedding present.

It's £1 on kindle UK today!

quite a lot of feminists are statsheads too

I don't have a kindle, bit of a techno-peasant.

Would it be a good book to have in a school library? It sounds like it would fit in well with some of the courses that we offer.

If so, I'll request that it be ordered.

Yes, I think it would be fine for a school library.

Nigel short, you win at Confirmation Bias!

When I was at juniors (state) we had chess teams (when it was still popular 80's) but there were no girls playing it, probably because they had been told they weren't up to it. So how many are actually going to end up at professional level year later!?

Its like spatial awareness all over again, if girls play with lego etc from same age as boys I would find it hard to believe there would be any difference gender wise.

It is accepted that boys/men are more likely to be found at the extreme high end low ends of the intellectual intelligence spectrum. Aspergers traits dominate in men. On average men are no more/less intelligent than women but men dominate at the extremes.

In the extreme at the very highest level of intellect men dominate and men therefore dominate world class chess at Grandmaster level. On average women are not less able to play chess and many women will outclass many men at chess.

At the level Mr Short plays at it is true that women will be under represented for known reasons. It is not true to say though on average across the population that women are less good than men at chess.

I knew a female Grandmaster - she had very definite Aspergers traits.

only if you determine that measurement of highest level of intellect includes being good enough at chess to be a grand master - or perhaps rather that being good enough at chess to be a grand master is an indicator of being at the highest level of intellect. is that an agreed definition though? i'm not saying it isn't, just that all these things come with assumptions

HapShawl - yes its a particular type of 'chess playing intelligence' more common at the extreme but not exclusively found in men.

It's also "accepted" that Asperger's is under diagnosed in women because the typical profile is based on a male profile. It's self reinforcing.

And is it a similar argument that leads you to "explain" why there have mainly been Caucasian grand masters? Or do you think that difference might be cultural?

Aspergers traits dominate in men

No, they don't. They just present in a specific way, which fits in with certain diagnostic tools slightly better. Girls are just as likely to have some degree of ASD.

So your female chess GM friend may or may well not have asperger's traits. To suggest that people with asperger's traits are going to be better at chess shows a marked lack of understanding of asperger's, sorry.

It is accepted that boys/men are more likely to be found at the extreme high end low ends of the intellectual intelligence spectrum... On average men are no more/less intelligent than women but men dominate at the extremes.

Do you have any links to proper academic studies that show this? I'd be interested to have a read.

I am excellent at chess! It is a skill that needs to be learnt, also concentration and memory. That is all. No bloke will play with me because I always beat them ??

It's pretty obvious that the signifiers of intelligence tend to be things that the most privileged have traditionally had access to. I'm not sure what a "particular type of "chess playing intelligence"" actually means (it feels like a phrase dumbed down for my lady-brain, though I'm sure that is unintentional). especially when it comes to the kind of people who have access to the means of reaching things like grand master status in chess (and other competitive things that we associate with high intelligence). there is far more acceptance of and support for boys and men focusing on one activity in a single-minded way - think of the priority that men's hobbies often take even once children come along.

This isn't to deny that being a chess grand master means significant intellectual skill. I'm just not sure that that alone is an indicator of extreme intelligence such that gender differences in chess are justified by "accepted" truths about the range of men's and women's intelligence.

"In the extreme at the very highest level of intellect men dominate and men therefore dominate world class chess at Grandmaster level. On average women are not less able to play chess and many women will outclass many men at chess."

In which case you'd expect to find a hell of a lot more women playing chess than you do. So that deficit must be cultural.

Until fathers play with their daughters as much as their sons, until girls see said skill being practised by as many women as men, until people stop declaring that boys are "hard-wired" to be better at said skill, and until we wait a few generations for these changes to permeate through society, we can never put any intellectual difference down to biology.

To me that is so bloody in-your-face obvious and logical and that it surprises me that Nigel the fantastic chess player can't see it.

as we all know it suits him very well not to see it. he can focus single-mindedly on this activity that is generally accepted as a signifier of high intelligence, without having to acknowledge that he might have had an advantage over other groups of people that doesn't include innate intelligence, and without having to trouble himself with the bothersome needs and emotions of other people.

Hovis2001 Do you have any links to proper academic studies that show this? I'd be interested to have a read.?

I don't have access to the actual article, however the abstract of this academic paper does seem to suggest that there is a larger variation in male inteligences, than female, but there is an insignificant difference in the means.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606001115

Very contentious I would have thought.