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.

But perhaps that's because I'm a woman and therefore stupid.

Disinterested, my arse.

Oops. V. unladylike.

Partial, I really urge you to read Cordelia fine.

If the attention of students is drawn towards their sex immediately before a maths test, girls perform worse than if it isn't.

Does that sound innate to you?

Let's spend 100 years telling boys that girls are better at maths and science, then rerun these stats and see if the effect, such as it is, remains.

What do you think?

Buffy, I have no doubt that doubt are my superior in many, if not all measurable types of intelligence.

I see myself clumped somewhere in the middle of most types. Though maybe I flatter myself into thinking that I am above average in some areas that helped me get a maths degree, also my dw thinks have a high emotional intelligence, (for what that's worth).

I work in an environment where I would judge most of my female colleagues to be of a higher intelligence than me, (again, for what that is worth.)

But yes, I do have a possibly misguided instinct that extremes of intellect exist in males.

Studies have supported this instinct, but they may be flawed. I would rather the scientific community find these flaws than me.

If I am cherry picking at data, I doubt if I am the only one on either side of the argument

Great post buffy.

I can't say I like chess very much but I got all A's in maths & science A-levels and now work in engineering. Possibly because I had a male role model as a child who didn't think these things were just for boys...

"Studies have supported this instinct"

Studies can only be done on socialised people, by socialised people.

"Studies have supported this instinct, but they may be flawed" means you can't say studies have "supported this instinct".

I spend half my life telling my students you can't make statements like this.

TBH I think women are just as guilty of accepting the "hard wired" argument wholesale and probably for similar reasons.

If you were to look around at all the inequality (representation of women on TV, in politics, in well paid jobs, in crime stats) and conclude that a lot of it was cultural rather than innate, well you'd end up depressed as hell and with the burden of having to do something about it.

There's a lot to be said for sticking your head in the sand

So the hard wired rationale is pretty attractive for men who don't want to have to admit that they are capable of cleaning the toilet but would just rather not do it. Better to come up with a theory about how women are so much better at multi-tasking and attention to detail. Likewise for the wife who doesn't want to tackle her husband about his laziness (which is what half the threads in relationships are about let's face it).

Same for Nige's wife's superior "emotional intelligence" Makes him feel better.

On a slight tangent from this thread I started I caught a programme on Radio 4 this am about the dearth of female engineers in the UK. Only 6% of engineers are women in this country - the lowest percentage in Europe.

The programme included an interview about the Swedish stats where a 26% of all engineers are women. Here's the link for anyone who would like to listen

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05s3nmw

So, would the gendered brain proponents suggest there is something different about Swedish women's brains than British women's to account for the difference between the two countries? Do they have brains that are more like mens? Or could it, shock horror, possibly be cultural/societal?

Yonic I'm sorry, I missed your post before pressing the POST MESSAGE button.

I will indeed try to get my school library to order a copy of Cordela Fine's book. It sounds like a crucial point of view in this argument.

Does the fact that girls have consistently been out performing boys in public exams have any place in this argument?

Uptoapoint
"Studies have supported this instinct, but they may be flawed" means you can't say studies have "supported this instinct".

hmm I spend half my life telling my students you can't make statements like was fairly conducted this.

I'm sorry. What statements would you encourage your students to make iff the paper was considered to be puka?

(My 'íff')

"Studies have supported this instinct"

Studies can only be done on socialised people, by socialised people. I'm not cherry picking, I'm not denying there may be some statistically valid variation in the brains of blue eyed people and the brains of brown eyed people which would lead to an observable effect even if both were socialised the same. I'm saying you can't point and say "this difference, this one, is innate"

And if there was no difference in perception of male and female, do you think so many studies would be done, or would they be as rare as studies for my sneaky eye colour/brain structure hypothesis?

What "iff"?

If a study is flawed you cannot accept the conclusion. What's so confusing about that?

iff= if and only if

It's maths and logic shorthand.

You sound very hostile Uptoapoint.

Did you mean to sound like that?

Maths is my profession. I do know what iff means. It did not make sense in your sentence.

And who has found the flaws within the academic community?

I am quite prepared to accept that the findings are flawed, but only from within the recognised academic circle.

If such a circle is doubted, then that presents a lot of other issues... in my opinion.