>Some differences between the minds of men and women exist. >But in most areas, they are small and dwarfed by the variability >within each gender.

Even with large variability within each gender, it doesn't invalidate differences between genders. In a gross oversimplification, you can a distribution of male brains and female brains with large variance and different (but close) means. The overlap will be large, but there will also be significant populations of "distinct" male and female.

But if the differences between average women are greater than the differences between the averages of men and women, what meaningful statements can you make about gender differences? "On the whole, the female population appears to have a slightly higher linguistics capability"?

How exactly are you using "distinct"? It seems that a male brain could fit anywhere in the variance of the female distribution and vise versa.

blueshift:

But if the differences between average women are greater than the differences between the averages of men and women, what meaningful statements can you make about gender differences? "On the whole, the female population appears to have a slightly higher linguistics capability"?

How exactly are you using "distinct"? It seems that a male brain could fit anywhere in the variance of the female distribution and vise versa.

and it's both trivial and circular; we're pretty much all materialists in terms of the brain/consciousness these days, which means that any difference in behavior must reflect a difference in the brain; when you get down to it, people who know calculus must have some observable difference in their brains from people who don't know calculus, even though we can't identify it as yet. might be something subtle and esoteric as the ratio of two neurotransmitters in some region with a side effect of the frequency of firing somewhere else; anyway. but that doesn't mean the difference in the brain causes you to know calculus, in any useful meaning of the term.

then there's the general data dredging question; if you look at enough factors in enough people you'll find something; whether it's just chance or not is another question. but here's a good check: so women have thicker corpus callosums, and that supposedly gives them an advantage in language and emotional processing. well, there are patients who have had their corpus callosums completely severed surgically, and a few who have been discovered to not have one; is it possible to identify these people by their language and emotional skills? no, not at all. well, if not having any corpus callosum doesn't result in any identifiable change, it's hard to imagine that having one that's a bit larger or smaller will be significant.

(just for completeness and random weirdness, people without a corpus callosum can be identified by their having real trouble talking about something that the side of their body connected to the brain half not containing the speech center is doing, since the speech center is on only one side of the brain. like if they're holding something in one hand and can't see it, they can't tell you if it's a pencil or a screwdriver, while in the other hand they have no trouble; even though the affected hand might be able to actually use the thing correctly. but, for some reason, nobody's suggesting that the difference between men and women is that the enhanced corpus callosum gives women a slightly better ability to verbalize equally what's happening on both sides of their body, on the average.)

gzuckier:

...so women have thicker corpus callosums, and that supposedly gives them an advantage in language and emotional processing. well, there are patients who have had their corpus callosums completely severed surgically, and a few who have been discovered to not have one; is it possible to identify these people by their language and emotional skills? no, not at all. well, if not having any corpus callosum doesn't result in any identifiable change, it's hard to imagine that having one that's a bit larger or smaller will be significant.

Interesting question, though, is it possible to identify men versus women by their language and emotional skills? Perhaps not through qualitative assessments of their vocabulary, ability to answer SAT questions, or typing speed, but what about a Turing test?

I know that when I've read novels told in the first person with a male protagonist written by a female author, I can usuallly tell that something seems "off." I've also read comments from women about the opposite case, that men writing as women seems "off."

Certainly some of that is cultural - perhaps it'd be easier to trip up the average women with a football question than the average man, or perhaps not, but I'm thinking more about the emotional qualities of the writing.

--s

gzuckier:

...so women have thicker corpus callosums, and that supposedly gives them an advantage in language and emotional processing. well, there are patients who have had their corpus callosums completely severed surgically, and a few who have been discovered to not have one; is it possible to identify these people by their language and emotional skills? no, not at all. well, if not having any corpus callosum doesn't result in any identifiable change, it's hard to imagine that having one that's a bit larger or smaller will be significant.

Interesting question, though, is it possible to identify men versus women by their language and emotional skills? Perhaps not through qualitative assessments of their vocabulary, ability to answer SAT questions, or typing speed, but what about a Turing test?

I know that when I've read novels told in the first person with a male protagonist written by a female author, I can usuallly tell that something seems "off." I've also read comments from women about the opposite case, that men writing as women seems "off."

Certainly some of that is cultural - perhaps it'd be easier to trip up the average women with a football question than the average man, or perhaps not, but I'm thinking more about the emotional qualities of the writing.

--s

AbbaZaba2000:

gzuckier:

...so women have thicker corpus callosums, and that supposedly gives them an advantage in language and emotional processing. well, there are patients who have had their corpus callosums completely severed surgically, and a few who have been discovered to not have one; is it possible to identify these people by their language and emotional skills? no, not at all. well, if not having any corpus callosum doesn't result in any identifiable change, it's hard to imagine that having one that's a bit larger or smaller will be significant.

Interesting question, though, is it possible to identify men versus women by their language and emotional skills? Perhaps not through qualitative assessments of their vocabulary, ability to answer SAT questions, or typing speed, but what about a Turing test?

I know that when I've read novels told in the first person with a male protagonist written by a female author, I can usuallly tell that something seems "off." I've also read comments from women about the opposite case, that men writing as women seems "off."

Certainly some of that is cultural - perhaps it'd be easier to trip up the average women with a football question than the average man, or perhaps not, but I'm thinking more about the emotional qualities of the writing.

--s

well i definitely notice a difference in social interactions between the two sexes, on the average, but i wonder how much of that is learned. and then, how much of the learned is builtin, so to speak; for instance, suppose (as i sometimes wonder) if it's all down to the fact that little girls figure out early on that their mother is a girl like them; and little boys figure out there mother is a girl, and they're not; and that this sets girls off on a path of sort of having things in common, while boys are set off on a path of differences. (on the average). that's sort of environmental, then, but there's not a lot you can do about the fact that girls are born female and boys aren't, which makes it essentially hereditary. the "control group" of course would be babies whose primary caretakers are male, particularly where there's a female parent figure who plays the role a male does most of the time, i.e. secondary caretaker; but that's still pretty rare. and in cultures where babies are breastfed, obviously it's going to stay pretty rare. so there are questions which can't be answered from the top down, i guess; they'll have to wait until we get at them from the bottom up, so to speak, i.e. understanding genetics and development on the cellular and molecular level. and that's going to be a looooooong time from now.

"I know that when I've read novels told in the first person with a male protagonist written by a female author, I can usuallly tell that something seems "off." I've also read comments from women about the opposite case, that men writing as women seems "off."

I read a lot, and the primary difference I keep noting has do to with sex scenes...In scenes written by women, if the female character has an orgasm, it is because the male character gets her off; whereas in scenes written by men, the two protagonists generally come to orgasm simultaneously, through vaginal intercourse alone.

I doubt this has as much to do with innate brain differences as with simple ignorance or wishful thinking, though.

Freki

PS I am not talking about books based around sex, just regular fiction with some humpin' in it. The last time I noted this was in "Beyond the Gap" by Harry Turtledove.

gzuckier:

well i definitely notice a difference in social interactions between the two sexes, on the average, but i wonder how much of that is learned. and then, how much of the learned is builtin, so to speak; for instance, suppose (as i sometimes wonder) if it's all down to the fact that little girls figure out early on that their mother is a girl like them; and little boys figure out there mother is a girl, and they're not; and that this sets girls off on a path of sort of having things in common, while boys are set off on a path of differences. (on the average). that's sort of environmental, then, but there's not a lot you can do about the fact that girls are born female and boys aren't, which makes it essentially hereditary. the "control group" of course would be babies whose primary caretakers are male, particularly where there's a female parent figure who plays the role a male does most of the time, i.e. secondary caretaker; but that's still pretty rare. and in cultures where babies are breastfed, obviously it's going to stay pretty rare. so there are questions which can't be answered from the top down, i guess; they'll have to wait until we get at them from the bottom up, so to speak, i.e. understanding genetics and development on the cellular and molecular level. and that's going to be a looooooong time from now.

Well that's an interesting question. First there's no question that infant boys and infant girls are different - I've had one of each and I can attest to that. So that's sort of a counter to what Schaffer is saying - I think it's clear that there are most definitely differences between 2 year old girls and 2 year old boys. She concedes that. So given that, even if the differences disappear completely by adulthood, you still can't say "there's no mental difference between human males and females," at best you have to qualify it -- "by adulthood, there's no evidence of mental difference between human males and females" (assuming even that's true)

So the question isn't "are male brains and female brains different," the question at best is "do male brains and female brains become the same, eventually, or do they stay different (and if so, does it make any difference)"

if the difference is purely cultural, then I think you should expect to see cultural variation greater than gender variation - that is, there ought to be some cultures where the boys play with dolls and the girls play with trucks, say. The lack of that divergence indicates to me that the cultural component (which probably exists) isn't entirely independent.

I imagine you could change the way girls react, culturally, if you raised them in an environment with only men - no female caregivers of any kind. Don't think you'd make them into males, culturally, but I do think it'd have an impact. But if that's the mechanism by which the genes express the difference, then it's like saying that the difference in average height between men and women is irrelevant because you could surgically shorten the men and lengthen the women.

--s