Nerds. Nerds EVERYWHERE...

[deLurch]

And with that Rachel Dolezal slowly creeps her out of a hole. And some women have penises.

[comhcinc]

Of course half of the article is devoted to explaining how this is a actually misogynystic and hurts women. B

[Old_ones]

There's something to the idea that, if women are underrepresented in a given venue, extra encouragement should be directed to them. You have to walk the knife edge here, you can't be forcing someone to do something they don't want to do, but you also don't want an individual succumbing to the stereotype of their place out of hopelessness. Boiling it down to a maxim, everyone should be encouraged to think of themselves as individuals and to buck any trend they wish to. In practice, I believe that will amount to favoring minorities, as the normals clearly won't benefit from the advice at all (nor will they suffer, except that some of them may be out competed by the entries in the field).

Should women also get extra encouragement to enter traditionally male careers like mining and felling timber, or are we only talking about the careers that the media likes to hype, like STEM and video game development?

[Couch]

Btw I can pinpoint when James started being such an SJW faggot, it was right after his screens got taken as evidence of the pit's biggotry and racism. Don't need to overcompensate to show your liberal bona fides, brah.

PZ said back in April-ish that (former) Pit denizen Bovarchist sent him an allegedly racist email.

What became of Bovarchist? He seemed to disappear, maybe contemporaneous to that.

[Couch]

Btw I can pinpoint when James started being such an SJW faggot, it was right after his screens got taken as evidence of the pit's biggotry and racism. Don't need to overcompensate to show your liberal bona fides, brah.

PZ said back in April-ish that (former) Pit denizen Bovarchist sent him an allegedly racist email.

What became of Bovarchist? He seemed to disappear, maybe contemporaneous to that.

[Couch]

My first DP!

Been waiting for that.

[Couch]

I just googled 'My First DP'. he he.

:cdc:

[deLurch]

If you dress up as Rachel Dolezal, are you dressing up in black face?

[youtube]ieowIzQwYvs[/youtube]

[comhcinc]

My first DP!

Been waiting for that.

[youtube]jElfEoTZSzg[/youtube]

[MacGruberKnows]

Ever talk to a woman about color? I know brown, grey, purple, yellow, orange. They know sandstone, puce, something like this:

http://www.geekinheels.com/wp-content/u ... colors.jpg

I had a girlfriend go on for two hours as I drove her store to store about how her shoes had to be this color of brown, not that color of brown, because they had to match her belt and purse color of brown. Never did find the shoes that had just that color of brown.

What is the reason for women's superior color discrimination? I know PZ's answer, plasticity! Plasticity is all! (He really said that about brain development, no citations, no evidence, just good conforming to feminist ideology dogma). Me? My position is plastic, I am willing to hear the evidence from both sides. And not replace reality with the dogma of my choosing. Because I am a skeptic. Pz and SJW's et al, not so much.

Be careful (i.e., don't) jump from having more labels to being able to make finer discriminations. That claim was made about Inuits, who have something like 27 different words for snow - therefore, they must be able to distinguish between types of snow better - but it was then shown that Inuits and lower-48ers are no different in being about to make snow-related discriminations. It was one of the more embarrassing results for the Sapir-Whorf Hypothsis.

Fun fact: the klingon on Star Trek was named after Benjamin Whorf.

I bet the Inuit men called the color of snow as 'white' and I bet the Inuit women called the color of snow as 'pearl, oyster, linen, eggshell, alabaster, ivory, frost, parchment, cotton, etc'.

[Billie from Ockham]

I bet the Inuit men called the color of snow as 'white' and I bet the Inuit women called the color of snow as 'pearl, oyster, linen, eggshell, alabaster, ivory, frost, parchment, cotton, etc'.

Yep. And if Frank Zappa had been a female Inuit, we would have been treated to:

"Watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat that lemon snow."

[Skep tickle]

There's something to the idea that, if women are underrepresented in a given venue, extra encouragement should be directed to them. You have to walk the knife edge here, you can't be forcing someone to do something they don't want to do, but you also don't want an individual succumbing to the stereotype of their place out of hopelessness. Boiling it down to a maxim, everyone should be encouraged to think of themselves as individuals and to buck any trend they wish to. In practice, I believe that will amount to favoring minorities, as the normals clearly won't benefit from the advice at all (nor will they suffer, except that some of them may be out competed by the entries in the field).

"the normals" - ?

[Stunt Whisper]

For what it's worth I've finally caught up.

[Gefan]

Besides "It's Japan, therefore all bets are off", I will offer no comment.

[CaptainFluffyBunny]

The group sizes are different but unfortunately that seems like it only worsens the decision to drop the one but not the other. Please correct me if I'm wrong - that's quite possible, as stats is not an area of expertise for me. From Table 1 in the paper:

Subgroup sizes:
Women, own name: n = 35*
Men, own name: n= 23

Women, fictitious female name: n = 42
Men, fictitious female name: n = 24

Women, fictitious male name: n = 33
Men, fictitious male name: n = 25

Women, any fictitious name: n = 75* **
Men, any fictitious name: n = 49**

* = comparison groups for which difference is 0.07 and reported as significant
** = comparison groups for which difference is 0.09 and reported as not significant

Yep.

Having the results depend on group sizes is one of the (best) reasons to avoid unique error terms. Any between-subjects analysis, as we have here, can be done with a common error term, based on the overall analysis, and then modified for group size for error bars (although, after the square-root is applied, these Ns aren't different enough to make much of a difference). But that is not how most stats packages, such as the SPSS, operate. You have to do a lot by hand to do a non-equivalent-groups analysis correctly and I've seen maybe two examples of this (other than those I've done) in the last 15 years.

One reason why these analyses are done incorrectly is because that is what drug-makers want. Ever read the flip-side of a drug ad? You'll almost always see an N for the control group that is an order of magnitude larger than that for the experimental group. Why do they do this? If you ask them, they'll give you a bullshit story about it not being ethical to run many people in the drug group until they are sure that the side-effects are minimal. Get them drunk in the hotel bar at a conference and hear the truth: by using hugely unequal Ns, they have reduced the power to being about what you'd have if both groups were a bit larger than the size of the smaller group. (Steersman: the effective group size [for statistical power] is equal to the geometric mean of the two groups, instead of the arithmetic mean.) Thus, with 1000 in the control group and 100 in the experimental group, they can claim (to the FDA, which only hires people who know no stats) that they ran 1100 people and still found side-effects in the drug group to be no higher than control, when they actually only ran about 360 people for the purposes of power. Again, why do they do this? because the last thing they want to do is actually find that the rate of side-effects is higher on the drug than control.

Anyhoo, my point is that it's rather typical to use unique error terms in these analyses, but that doesn't make it correct. And one of the things that can happen - especially with sub-group Ns below 30 (at which Central Limit Theory seriously kicks in) - is that smaller differences can end up with lower p-values than larger differences. When I see that, I take what I'm reading less seriously. (I also go out and kill a kitten, but that's not really important.)

Other than the kitten killing, that was actually pretty illuminating.

[MacGruberKnows]

I bet the Inuit men called the color of snow as 'white' and I bet the Inuit women called the color of snow as 'pearl, oyster, linen, eggshell, alabaster, ivory, frost, parchment, cotton, etc'.

Yep. And if Frank Zappa had been a female Inuit, we would have been treated to:

"Watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat that lemon snow."

My mother actually made a dessert that we called Spanish snow or lemon snow. Basically a gelatin-milk mix that you whipped as the gelatin set up to make it light and frothy with (probably) beaten egg whites folded in, chilled and a custard was poured over top before eating. The lemon part was from lemon juice and lemon zest being in it to give it a tang. God it was good. Way too much effort for me to make so it's a dessert lost to my youth.

I just googled it and the rest of the world calls it Spanish cream, but none of the pictures look like the fluffy stuff my mother made, the Googled stuff looks more solid and gelatinous. Lemon snow people, it's not only for the dogs.

[Couch]

For what it's worth I've finally caught up.

Hooray. It is a cleansing feeling.

I could never get up to-to-date on the Pit. Then I started scrolling past the posts of one partic. contributor, and have since found it heaps easier to keep within spitting distance of the last post.

[youtube]G-Pz5KsyfN0[/youtube]

[MacGruberKnows]

Besides "It's Japan, therefore all bets are off", I will offer no comment.

From wikipedia: "an adult gorilla's erect penis is about 4 cm (1.5 in) in length"

There is nothing sexier than an Asian woman saying "eee sohhhh beeeeeeeggggg".

"Eeee sooohhh smaaaallll", not so much.

[Couch]

"the normals" - ?

With a debt collector hot on his trail, Harvard graduate Billy Schine enrolls in a clinical drug trial to make a quick buck. Carted out of New York City in a shuttle full of oddball characters, Billy and the rest of the guinea pigs, affectionately referred to as "Normals," camp out at hidden research facility. When not popping pills, being tagged, drained of blood, prodded, poked and color-coded, they are telling horror stories of previous tests or generally getting on each other's nerves. As the test drags on, just being there starts to take its toll, and tensions build until the dam finally bursts. Billy realizes that there is no such thing as "normal." Based on the novel by David Gilbert.

[youtube]05P3skZ0sng[/youtube]

[Skep tickle]

Robert Sapolsky is worth reading or watching:

[youtube]m5cat-kR0j8[/youtube]

These links describe math & gender findings by country, similar to the study Sapolsky mentions:
http://chance.amstat.org/2014/11/visiphilia/
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/ ... 95250-8-en (click any of the routes to see the short report - the figure is easiest to read in the pdf vs the other formats)

Note that math gets a lot of attention but isn't the only domain in which gender differences exist. From the 2nd link above:

Boys outperform girls in mathematics by an average of 12 points across OECD countries. This is a small gap compared to the 39 points, on average, in favour of girls in reading performance.

[deLurch]

Besides "It's Japan, therefore all bets are off", I will offer no comment.

From wikipedia: "an adult gorilla's erect penis is about 4 cm (1.5 in) in length"

There is nothing sexier than an Asian woman saying "eee sohhhh beeeeeeeggggg".

"Eeee sooohhh smaaaallll", not so much.

Well if a favored form of attacking one's rival includes ripping off your opponent's genitals, I too would be thankful for an evolutionary supplied smaller target.

[Skep tickle]

I've been thinking more about girls' self-confidence in science & math since starting to transcribe the Milo Y & Emily Grossman TV show segment yesterday. I poked around to find a couple more studies, including this one: Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement (PNAS, 2010; full text plus supplement at link). From the abstract on this study of 17 female 1st & 2nd grade teachers and 117 of their students:

By the school years' end,...the more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely girls (but not boys) were to endorse the commonly held stereotype that “boys are good at math, and girls are good at reading” and the lower these girls’ math achievement.

Consider, then, a couple of possible approaches to improving girls' experience of their math & science education. From Grossman, the advice is to make science & math learning environments more nurturing for girls. From the study above, one might consider whether reducing math anxiety in early elementary teachers (or, reducing early elementary teachers with math anxiety) could help. Or, last but not least, from the Hornbeckian school: tell girls during science & math classes that, because it's just a social construct, they're boys. (Best to have that be limited to those classes, though, so the girls' overall school performance doesn't suffer.)

[Steersman]

Engage scroll finger.

Myers’ post (archive link) “The hopeless arrogance of Milo Yiannopoulos”, mentioned here yesterday, opens:

There was a recent debate on British television between Milo Yiannopoulos and Emily Grossman on Sexism in Science. I have no idea why Yiannopoulos was even invited; he’s got no qualifications at all to be talking about this stuff. I guess he was the representative for sexism, while Grossman was there to represent science.

[.youtube]kBiS4qTsjCg[/youtube]

I went all A+ on y’all and transcribed the video. "MY" is Milo Yiannopoulos (the sexist) and "EG" is Emily Grossman (the scientist).

Transcript: Debate: Sexism in Science (June 10, sky news) – part 1
<snip>

Thanks for the transcript. Amusing that Grossman essentially concedes that there are differences between men and women - statistically speaking - even if they might be relatively minor - Carrier talked of differences, on average, on the order of 10%, depending on the aspect. Rather problematic though that many seem unwilling or unable to deal with those.

[CaptainFluffyBunny]

Besides "It's Japan, therefore all bets are off", I will offer no comment.

It's not just Japan. Sensible people are betting Comhcinc would hit it.

[CaptainFluffyBunny]

Btw I can pinpoint when James started being such an SJW faggot, it was right after his screens got taken as evidence of the pit's biggotry and racism. Don't need to overcompensate to show your liberal bona fides, brah.

PZ said back in April-ish that (former) Pit denizen Bovarchist sent him an allegedly racist email.

What became of Bovarchist? He seemed to disappear, maybe contemporaneous to that.

Bovachist stole all my white sheets and said he had to meet Steers at some sort of rally.

[paddybrown]

Ever talk to a woman about color? I know brown, grey, purple, yellow, orange. They know sandstone, puce, something like this:

http://www.geekinheels.com/wp-content/u ... colors.jpg

I had a girlfriend go on for two hours as I drove her store to store about how her shoes had to be this color of brown, not that color of brown, because they had to match her belt and purse color of brown. Never did find the shoes that had just that color of brown.

What is the reason for women's superior color discrimination? I know PZ's answer, plasticity! Plasticity is all! (He really said that about brain development, no citations, no evidence, just good conforming to feminist ideology dogma). Me? My position is plastic, I am willing to hear the evidence from both sides. And not replace reality with the dogma of my choosing. Because I am a skeptic. Pz and SJW's et al, not so much.

Ha! This is an ongoing debate with my wife. I stubbornly insist there are, at the very most, 9 colors. She tries to dissuade me by pointing to things that clearly fall outside of my classification scheme, but it's easy enough to resort to hand-waving and escape. "That's bluish"

Colours are a social construct.

[Guest]

I've been thinking more about girls' self-confidence in science & math since starting to transcribe the Milo Y & Emily Grossman TV show segment yesterday. I poked around to find a couple more studies, including this one: pnas.org/content/107/5/1860.full.pdf?with-ds=yes Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement (PNAS, 2010; full text plus supplement at link). From the abstract on this study of 17 female 1st & 2nd grade teachers and 117 of their students:

By the school years' end,...the more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely girls (but not boys) were to endorse the commonly held stereotype that “boys are good at math, and girls are good at reading” and the lower these girls’ math achievement.

Consider, then, a couple of possible approaches to improving girls' experience of their math & science education. From Grossman, the advice is to make science & math learning environments more nurturing for girls. From the study above, one might consider whether reducing math anxiety in early elementary teachers (or, reducing early elementary teachers with math anxiety) could help. Or, last but not least, from the Hornbeckian school: tell girls during science & math classes that, because it's just a social construct, they're boys. (Best to have that be limited to those classes, though, so the girls' overall school performance doesn't suffer.)

This is first and second grade math.
And the female teachers are anxious.

corestandards.org/Math/Content/2/introduction/

Understanding multidigit numbers up to 1000.
Counting by 5s, 10s, and multiples of 100s.
Add and subtract within 100 (under 100?)
Understand inch and centimeter and use rulers.
Analyze shapes

Given the quality (or lack thereof) of math teaching I have seen in K-12, I might think what is hurting girls in math is not what Tim Hunt says at a lunch in Korea, but having shitty teachers who exhibit math anxiety on 2nd grade math.

Perhaps instead of subjecting kids to a plethora of standardized teaching, we should give math competency and math anxiety tests to all teachers and then help those teachers learn math and learn how to teach math.

And make sure all kids and teachers memorize their fucking addition and subtraction tables, and give them back plenty of paper, and make them fucking practice and practice and practice until the shit is memorized.

The absolutely shitty math skills I've seen by high school graduates, college graduates, (and even ph.ds) who are otherwise clearly quite bright is the most depressing thing ever but clear indications that what hurts kids is terrible teachers, not the patriarchy.

[paddybrown]

I can agree with most of this, but I'm tired of this trope that women ought to be encouraged to do anything.

One thing I've noticed is that an awful lot of the fields that women and girls need to be "encouraged" to enter because they're male dominated are ones that men and boys are seriously socially discouraged from getting into but do anyway. At school, being a maths nerd or a science nerd means getting your head flushed down the toilet and your schoolbag thrown onto the roof on a regular basis. Being a gamer or a comics artist were social death until recently. Being an atheist still invites suspicion.

And music. They're currently complaining about the gender breakdown of the Glastonbury festival. Half the girls I went to school with formally learned classical instruments, did exams in them, and then stopped playing. A much smaller number of boys taught themselves guitar or drums and formed bands. My mum was a primary school teacher, and for most of her career taught 10 and 11 year olds. When she discovered one of the boys in her class was a champion ballroom dancer he begged her not to tell anyone because he'd be eaten alive by the other kids.

I sometimes wonder if "encouraging" is the wrong approach. Maybe, if you're serious about something, you need adversity to fight against.

[Couch]

Btw I can pinpoint when James started being such an SJW faggot, it was right after his screens got taken as evidence of the pit's biggotry and racism. Don't need to overcompensate to show your liberal bona fides, brah.

PZ said back in April-ish that (former) Pit denizen Bovarchist sent him an allegedly racist email.

What became of Bovarchist? He seemed to disappear, maybe contemporaneous to that.

Bovachist stole all my white sheets and said he had to meet Steers at some sort of rally.

I just snort-laughed on a quiet train!

[rayshul]

As a heterosexual female I have genuinely no fucking idea why a woman would need to be encouraged to enter a male dominated subject or career path.

[Couch]

I can agree with most of this, but I'm tired of this trope that women ought to be encouraged to do anything.

One thing I've noticed is that an awful lot of the fields that women and girls need to be "encouraged" to enter because they're male dominated are ones that men and boys are seriously socially discouraged from getting into but do anyway. At school, being a maths nerd or a science nerd means getting your head flushed down the toilet and your schoolbag thrown onto the roof on a regular basis. Being a gamer or a comics artist were social death until recently. Being an atheist still invites suspicion.

And music. They're currently complaining about the gender breakdown of the Glastonbury festival. Half the girls I went to school with formally learned classical instruments, did exams in them, and then stopped playing. A much smaller number of boys taught themselves guitar or drums and formed bands. My mum was a primary school teacher, and for most of her career taught 10 and 11 year olds. When she discovered one of the boys in her class was a champion ballroom dancer he begged her not to tell anyone because he'd be eaten alive by the other kids.

I sometimes wonder if "encouraging" is the wrong approach. Maybe, if you're serious about something, you need adversity to fight against.

Is there a name for that thing; you know, where the likelihood of a kid pursuing a particular course of action is inversely proportional to one's advocacy of such course of action to said kid?

There's gotta be a name for that.

[rayshul]

Well when you look at "gifted" kids a lot of them turn out losers because they have no challenges and they've been told their whole life than they're good so they don't have to study/work for it.

[Shatterface as Guest]

'Stereotype threat' means that those who identify themselves as women or black on tests will under perform in tests but if they do the same tests anonymously or with male or white-sounding pseudonyms they will perform better.

Surely this means identity politics are the problem not the solution? Identity politics is all about identifying yourself as part of an underperforming group.

Shatterface

[paddybrown]

I can agree with most of this, but I'm tired of this trope that women ought to be encouraged to do anything.

One thing I've noticed is that an awful lot of the fields that women and girls need to be "encouraged" to enter because they're male dominated are ones that men and boys are seriously socially discouraged from getting into but do anyway. At school, being a maths nerd or a science nerd means getting your head flushed down the toilet and your schoolbag thrown onto the roof on a regular basis. Being a gamer or a comics artist were social death until recently. Being an atheist still invites suspicion.

And music. They're currently complaining about the gender breakdown of the Glastonbury festival. Half the girls I went to school with formally learned classical instruments, did exams in them, and then stopped playing. A much smaller number of boys taught themselves guitar or drums and formed bands. My mum was a primary school teacher, and for most of her career taught 10 and 11 year olds. When she discovered one of the boys in her class was a champion ballroom dancer he begged her not to tell anyone because he'd be eaten alive by the other kids.

I sometimes wonder if "encouraging" is the wrong approach. Maybe, if you're serious about something, you need adversity to fight against.

Is there a name for that thing; you know, where the likelihood of a kid pursuing a particular course of action is inversely proportional to one's advocacy of such course of action to said kid?

There's gotta be a name for that.

Refining the thought: the approval of others is not sufficient motivation to pursue something difficult. Handholding can only take you so far. You need internal motivation, strong enough to overcome discouragement.

Another thought. We have no difficulty understanding that the ability to draw, or create music, or play sports, requires a specific set of aptitudes that not everybody has. Why is it so difficult for people to accept the same is true for maths? It's the basis of all the hard sciences, engineering and programming, and not everyone can do it. General intelligence will take you so far, but to get past a certain point you need a specialist kind of intelligence, and that's rare. If it's slightly less rare in men than in women, that doesn't mean no women have it, or that women are all too stupid or something.

[deLurch]

More talk of SJW's on Joe Rogan's podcast.

[Tribble]

Think about this: Yiannopoulos is arguing that men’s and women’s brains are different, and men are intrinsically better at the science stuff. But Yiannopoulos is a college dropout, twice over, has no background in science at all (just like he has no background in gaming, either, but then no amount of ignorance will stop him from plowing on). It’s not clear what he studied in college, but it seems to have been journalism or English, not science.

Right. It's impossible that men might tend to be inherently better at science than women, cuz one woman is better at science than one man. QED.

And they let this shit-for-brains stand in front of a classroom.

Ever talk to a woman about color? I know brown, grey, purple, yellow, orange. They know sandstone, puce, something like this:

...

I had a girlfriend go on for two hours as I drove her store to store about how her shoes had to be this color of brown, not that color of brown, because they had to match her belt and purse color of brown. Never did find the shoes that had just that color of brown.

What is the reason for women's superior color discrimination? I know PZ's answer, plasticity! Plasticity is all! (He really said that about brain development, no citations, no evidence, just good conforming to feminist ideology dogma). Me? My position is plastic, I am willing to hear the evidence from both sides. And not replace reality with the dogma of my choosing. Because I am a skeptic. Pz and SJW's et al, not so much.

It's different, not necessarily superior. As a population, men have a superior visual cortex with about 25% more neurons. Men are better with reds. Men have a greater range of colors they can see. Men are better at detecting movement. Men are weak with greens, blues & yellows and women out-perform them. Women are better with shades within colors then men. Women see greens & blues as more vibrant and distinct than men.

But that's just in people with normal color vision.

The funny thing is that actual scientists actually test these things, write papers and do their honest best to try and solve these issues: http://www.bsd-journal.com/content/3/1/20

Biology of Sex Differences is the official journal of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences, and a publication of the Society for Women's Health Research

While others rely on rigid, unthinking, inflexible dogma. It's pathetic, really.

I mean, this paper could be wrong. It could have flaws but be mostly correct. The effect could be weaker or stronger. I don't know. BUT, the dogma of 'men and women are the same except reproductive organs' is so ludicrous that it's 'not even wrong.' And yet that's where Myers has gone...

He's a joke. Hell, he's beyond a joke.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

Another islamic terrorist attack this morning in France by two guys. So far, it's only been reported that one person was beheaded and their head hung on the factory's gate along with two islamic flags. The terrorists also drove through some gaz containers, probably trying to explode them. One of the suspected attackers has been arrested.

[Kirbmarc]

You can quote your statistics until the cows come home but that does not in any way, shape or form address that rather important question; those statistics are merely descriptive, but in no way address the causes for that belief: many people have believed that the universe revolved around the Earth, but I hardly think you're likely to think that that made it so. Or maybe you do, and that you subscribe to the view that reality is socially constructed ...

There's a huge difference between the nature of the position of the Earth within the universe and the nature of language.

The Earth isn't socially constructed: the behaviors of thousands or millions of people about its position within the universe do not change it one bit. Languages are, at a least partly, a social construct. Racism is also largely a social construct. I was actually waiting for you to make your point explicit, so it can be refuted more easily.

Your view of language as something existing on its own, as a structure of rules and meanings that have a direct correspondence to some structures in the brain, is similar to the view of the logical positivists or of the first Wittgenstein (around the time he wrote the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.)

But even the "second Wittgenstein" noticed this simply isn't how language is used in society. Only formal languages (like mathematics) can be described as a set of rules and axioms.

"Natural" languages are a social tool. Their phonetic and part of their phonological basis have some correlation to human physiology (the shape of the mouth, of the pharynx and the larynx, the properties of the vocal cords, etc.). The specific syntactic rules of every language can be formalized to a degree and have some correlation to the nature of the human brain. Pragmatic inferences follow a degree of formality as well, and this formality is ultimately caused by the nature of the human brain. General psychological considerations also inform some of the considerations of pragmatics.

However while there are some limits to how a language can operate (set by physiology and psychology) in its practical uses languages are what societies make of them. The purposes of languages are all social, they're all related to communication between individuals and expression of ideas to an audience. Languages do not exists in a formal vacuum: they constantly change for social reasons.

Those changes affect all the levels of a language, from its phonology to its morphology to its syntax to its semantics to its pragmatics. People constantly change the way they pronounce word, the shape of those words, the way they arrange those words, the meaning of those words and the way they shape their discourses for social reasons. Linguists who study those changes would be incredibly disingenuous to disregard the effects of society on language, since society is the primary source of pretty much all distinctive features between one variety of language and another.

As Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed in his seminal work Philosophical Investigations: "‘In most cases, the meaning of a word is its use".

Racism is also another example of something which is largely a social construct. Differences in genetic makeup between different populations are real and produce in many cases easily noticeable (and probably a few which are not so easy to identify) differences in physiology between those groups.

Racism, boiled down to its basics, is placing different groups of people over a scale of worth, one framed so that the "race" to which the subject feels, wants or believes to belong is on top and the "race" or ethnic group perceived as different and rival is on the bottom.

Not only this is scale of worth is entirely subjective and obviously unbalanced to favor the in-group over the out-group, but the very nature of what is a "race" or an ethnic background varies from society to society.

The Ancient Romans for example, were hugely culturally racist: they didn't care one bit about differences in physiology and elected emperors with ethnic backgrounds spanning from North Africa to Arabia to Germany. However they did care, and a lot, about whether someone had been formally introduced into Roman society and had received a Roman education.

Children raised in a Roman society as a Romans were Romans no matter how they looked. Children who didn't belong to Roman society and weren't raised as Romans weren't Romans, no matter how they looked.

Racism in the United States largely operated (and still operate to a lesser degree), on the basis of ancestry: if you have some evident (if more or less remote) Sub-Saharan African ancestry you're "black". People with no evident sub-Saharan ancestry have also been called "black" once their ancestry has been known, and have been referred as "passing" for "white" if they pretended not to have any of such ancestry even though this ancestry wasn't evident, with no consideration of their position in society or education.

Other societies don't give a hoot about ancestry and only care about evident physiological differences: in the Dominican Republic a man with Colin Powell's skin color would be considered a "high creole" and assigned a much higher social status than a man with the skin color of the late Michael Clarke Duncan, while in the US they're both classified as "black".

This is to say that while physiological and genetic differences are real, and while the nature of the prejudice against the out-group and in favor of the in-group is the root of racism and has some psychological basis, racism is largely a social construct.

Given these premises (both language and racism have huge social influences) it's very easy to see how the racist nature of a word, unlike the position of the Earth within the universe, IS a social construct. Therefore it's far from pointless to point out how society shape the uses of such a term and whether that term is considered to be racist or not.

Currently the social influences on the word "nigger" largely classify it as a vicious racial slur unless it's used by members recognized as belonging to the "black community" (like Chris Rock) in which cases it has been "reappropriated" as an insult toward someone who behaves "stereotypically" or even as a badge of pride or term of endearment.

The word "cunt" have different connotation in different societies. When uses as an insult in the UK it's used against both men and women, largely as a generic insult. It is more used against women than men in the US, although this use isn't seen socially as reviled as the use of "nigger" from "whites" against "blacks".

Szvan's argument isn't a theoretical argument about the nature of society or language, but it's a moral argument. Due to the radfem ideology which Szvan adheres to the use of "cunt" is seen as "splashing damage" over all women and therefore "cunt" is classified as a "sexist slur"regardless of its actual different uses. This, however, is the product of ideological considerations, not of society.

The movement to which Szvan belongs wants to use the tools of social engineering to "fix" the issues that they have with the English language.

As much as you want to frame your argument as theoretical argument on the nature of language, your argument is a moral one and based on ideology. You basically believe that it's "unfair" for "black" people to use "nigger" with a certain connotation and not to be assumed to be racist, while if "whites" use that use the word "nigger" to address a "black" are automatically assumed to be racist.

Both you and Szvan want to reshape society to fit your ideology. At least she's more upfront about it than you.

It isn't necessarily morally wrong to gradually reshape society through social engineering (as long as it's not done through authoritarian means). All civil rights movements basically needed to do it and did it. The new meaning of the word "gay" is largely the product of social engineering, and it helped to carry forth a new, more positive perspective on the issues of same-sex marriage, equal rights and other issues.

However just like not all works of electric engineering are necessary not all works of social engineering are necessary. It isn't necessarily morally right to gradually reshape society to ban the use of the word "cunt", even through non-authoritarian means. The "splash damage" of its use today (if it even exists) hasn't been shown to be limiting women's rights and opportunities on a large social basis, no more than the "splash damage" of the use of the word "dick" has been shown to limit men's rights and opportunities on a large social basis. This is especially true win the UK where "cunt" is used as an insult for both sexes.

At the same time while the jury is still out on whether today the "splash damage" of the use of the word "nigger" limits black people's rights and opportunities on a large social basis, its use in the recent past has been largely connotated by racist measures which did limit black people's rights and opportunities on a large social basis.

Society's connotation to the word "nigger" as a vile racist slur, therefore, has much more historic weight to it than the radfems' claims about "cunt" or your moral argument about an abstract, context-less "fairness" in the use of "nigger".

[Scented Nectar]

<snip>
But in general and to address your point, while I'm willing to concede that Canada has periodically or frequently treated "first nations" people rather shabbily - as in the Indian residential school system - I kind of get the impression that rather too many aboriginals - and non-natives - don't really appreciate the benefits they've derived from western "civilization" (such as it is). While there is maybe some remote justification for that "stolen" characterization, many don't see or appreciate the improvements that have been made - or maybe they'd all like to go back to living in teepees and seeing their kids dying of preventable diseases. Which tends to make it doubly risible that, at least here in BC, all of the tribes here are claiming something like 110% of the province.

Sticky wicket and some apparently intractable problems. But I don't see that it helps that many are apparently too quick to ignore some important aspects.

<snip>

I agree that it's no good for anyone to go back to living conditions that are worse than modern Canadian culture, and the reserves are much worse. It's one thing to remember and celebrate parts of one's history, but the whole separate living on reserves thing is just stupid. And I consider it to be a racism of lowered expectations. ....

A-fucking-men to that. Maybe arguably, but it seems that the attitudes of many reserves is such that the main consequence is to turn them into self-created and enforced ghettos. Many exceptions of course, and there seems to be some changes afoot, but still rather too common.

I also consider religion-run separate school systems to be some sort of 'ism of lowered expectations. Not based on what race one's born with, but what family religious culture one is born into. So, separate hebrew, catholic, or muslim-run schools of the type that replace regular schools should be gotten rid of. I feel the same about part time 'Sunday schools' too, although those would probably be harder convince society to get rid of, since the kids are not missing out on normal regular school.

[Kirbmarc]

An example of social construction is politeness. Japanese politeness and American politeness are extremely different, and even very polite Americans can appear to be boors to the Japanese.

Steersman's position on the "nigger" issues is rather similar to the position of an American who went to Japan and argued at length and with numerous examples and references to papers and books that since Japanese politeness is based on cultural biases (true) and he perceives himself to be polite, Japanese society should change to accommodate to his own (no less culturally biased) beliefs about politeness.

This position looks extremely arrogant and clueless to anyone with even a basic understanding how societies work (including Steersman, I suppose).

[paddybrown]

Jonathan Sacks, the British Chief Rabbi, has written a book called Not In God's Name, in which he attempts to explain why people kill for religion. It's apparently all the fault of western liberal universalists who think we shouldn't do that. Apparently, if I've understood this correctly, trying to treat people as individuals and not divide the world into Them and Us alienates people who do divide the world into Them and Us.

It all goes back to St Paul, who was supposedly the first universalist. Then there was the Enlightenment, and now modern western individualism. So presumably before Paul there would have been nobody killing for religion.

I wonder has Rabbi Sacks read his religion's holy book?

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehou ... uch-worse/

[Scented Nectar]

Ever talk to a woman about color? I know brown, grey, purple, yellow, orange. They know sandstone, puce, something like this:

http://www.geekinheels.com/wp-content/u ... colors.jpg

I had a girlfriend go on for two hours as I drove her store to store about how her shoes had to be this color of brown, not that color of brown, because they had to match her belt and purse color of brown. Never did find the shoes that had just that color of brown.

What is the reason for women's superior color discrimination? I know PZ's answer, plasticity! Plasticity is all! (He really said that about brain development, no citations, no evidence, just good conforming to feminist ideology dogma). Me? My position is plastic, I am willing to hear the evidence from both sides. And not replace reality with the dogma of my choosing. Because I am a skeptic. Pz and SJW's et al, not so much.

That chart is surprisingly accurate with its colour names. Wiki's colour list sucks. It's all wrong. However, even though the colours/names are accurate, the entire red sections should be between the pinks and the oranges. Also, 'flora' seems made up. I've never seen that shade of green called that.

I've read that some women are 'super-seers' in regards to colour, whereas men are more prone to having colour blindness. There's a whole bunch of different types, not just the well known blue/green and red/green types. Some types can see all the colours but just more faded than normal, and there's one type that sees no colours at all. So much for the two sexes being a social construct.

http://www.colour-blindness.com/colour- ... ment-test/

[Aneris]

I've been thinking more about girls' self-confidence in science & math since starting to transcribe the Milo Y & Emily Grossman TV show segment yesterday. I poked around to find a couple more studies, including this one: pnas.org/content/107/5/1860.full.pdf?with-ds=yes Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement (PNAS, 2010; full text plus supplement at link). From the abstract on this study of 17 female 1st & 2nd grade teachers and 117 of their students:

By the school years' end,...the more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely girls (but not boys) were to endorse the commonly held stereotype that “boys are good at math, and girls are good at reading” and the lower these girls’ math achievement.

Consider, then, a couple of possible approaches to improving girls' experience of their math & science education. From Grossman, the advice is to make science & math learning environments more nurturing for girls. From the study above, one might consider whether reducing math anxiety in early elementary teachers (or, reducing early elementary teachers with math anxiety) could help. Or, last but not least, from the Hornbeckian school: tell girls during science & math classes that, because it's just a social construct, they're boys. (Best to have that be limited to those classes, though, so the girls' overall school performance doesn't suffer.)

This is first and second grade math.
And the female teachers are anxious.

corestandards.org/Math/Content/2/introduction/

Understanding multidigit numbers up to 1000.
Counting by 5s, 10s, and multiples of 100s.
Add and subtract within 100 (under 100?)
Understand inch and centimeter and use rulers.
Analyze shapes

Given the quality (or lack thereof) of math teaching I have seen in K-12, I might think what is hurting girls in math is not what Tim Hunt says at a lunch in Korea, but having shitty teachers who exhibit math anxiety on 2nd grade math.

Perhaps instead of subjecting kids to a plethora of standardized teaching, we should give math competency and math anxiety tests to all teachers and then help those teachers learn math and learn how to teach math.

And make sure all kids and teachers memorize their fucking addition and subtraction tables, and give them back plenty of paper, and make them fucking practice and practice and practice until the shit is memorized.

The absolutely shitty math skills I've seen by high school graduates, college graduates, (and even ph.ds) who are otherwise clearly quite bright is the most depressing thing ever but clear indications that what hurts kids is terrible teachers, not the patriarchy.

Very well, Guest. What's your name (and twitter handle) for I shall submit the information to FTB and the mob at once!

Ideology and rationalisations are curious bedfollows. The social justice warriors see the issue, but cannot fully embrace the findings (i.e. girls being shy as does around math and require “nurturing” environments), so they must default to sexism. But when the dispositions set on at such an early age, it cannot have much to do with alleged sexism. There are many things that are gendered, sometimes artificially, sometimes building on and perhaps amplifying — as it appears — genetic differences. Cohen, when I recall correctly, tested toddlers and found that testosterone in the womb makes the children later less interested in people and more in things (with autism as one byproduct).

You can say that science, as a lifestyle choice, is currently not marketed as compatible with what girls like, compared to what boys like. No wonder since it is left to stereotypes, and whatever people (most of who are men) make of it. So it would not be sexism per se, but that the people — nerdy and geeky types — are not good at making their field seem attractive to girls. In addition it's a demanding career. This means that someone must be really into it. Have that and run large numbers against it, and it seems plausible to me that men would outnumber women. Also, SJW twitterstorm and its inherent confirmation bias is counterproductive. People look for the negative, but there appears to be no way how the positive could be likewise confirmed. In the SJW world someone could not even dare saying something on women in science, even if meant well and carefully worded, without risking their career.

[German LurksBoatsman]

The Ancient Romans for example, were hugely culturally racist: they didn't care one bit about differences in physiology and elected emperors with ethnic backgrounds spanning from North Africa to Arabia to Germany.

I find that hard to believe. First, emperors weren't elected, unless you mean by that adopted or elected by the soldiers starting a rebellion. But in the late empire the soldiers often had ethnical diverse backgrounds themselves, so even if true that's not a good example.

Being born abroad doesn't mean much if you have Roman settlements around the mediterranean. McCain's being born in Panama doesn't make him hispanic.

To my knowledge there never was an ethnically African or German emperor. Hadrian probably had Hispanic ethnicity but how different that is to 2nd century Roman I cannot tell. Most ethnically different emperor that comes to my mind is Elagabalus. I steersmanned his wiki entry and he seems to have been a bisexual genderqueer sex-working half-arabic half-polytheist. Got his head cut off real quick after arriving in Rome to start his rule. Sounds rather shitlordish to me.

But maybe I'm missing something or late Roman emperors were more ethnically diverse than I think.

[Shatterface as Guest]

Another islamic terrorist attack this morning in France by two guys. So far, it's only been reported that one person was beheaded and their head hung on the factory's gate along with two islamic flags. The terrorists also drove through some gaz containers, probably trying to explode them. One of the suspected attackers has been arrested.

Just remember they're only punching down.

Shatterface

[Kirbmarc]

I find that hard to believe. First, emperors weren't elected, unless you mean by that adopted or elected by the soldiers starting a rebellion. But in the late empire the soldiers often had ethnical diverse backgrounds themselves, so even if true that's not a good example

Emperors were elected by buying off the soldier or by adoption. Historians usually use the word "elected to the title of emperors" even though there weren't "elections" as

To my knowledge there never was an ethnically African or German emperor.

Septimius Severus was "mixed race": he Italian Roman ancestry on his mother's side and Punic ancestry (maybe also Libyan ancestry) on his father's side.

Philip the Arab had a Syrian father.

Claudius Gothicus was of Germanic ancestry.

Hadrian probably had Hispanic ethnicity but how different that is to 2nd century Roman I cannot tell. Most ethnically different emperor that comes to my mind is Elagabalus. I steersmanned his wiki entry and he seems to have been a bisexual genderqueer sex-working half-arabic half-polytheist. Got his head cut off real quick after arriving in Rome to start his rule. Sounds rather shitlordish to me.

The lifestyle was much more of an issue than the ethnicity. I'm not saying that the Romans were tolerant, far from it. They were, as I wrote, hugely culturally racist: they believed that the Roman culture was superior to all others and that "un-Roman behavior" was disgusting. The nature of their racism was different from American racism, though, and that's the point of my screed. They didn't have "one drop" rules and they didn't care that much about physical appearance as long as you were culturally Roman.

Elagabalus was incredibly "un-Roman" in his behavior (including his sexuality) and therefore he was seen as a menace.

[Matt Cavanaugh]

Think about this: Yiannopoulos is arguing that men’s and women’s brains are different, and men are intrinsically better at the science stuff. But Yiannopoulos is a college dropout, twice over, has no background in science at all (just like he has no background in gaming, either, but then no amount of ignorance will stop him from plowing on). It’s not clear what he studied in college, but it seems to have been journalism or English, not science.

Right. It's impossible that men might tend to be inherently better at science than women, cuz one woman is better at science than one man. QED.

And they let this shit-for-brains stand in front of a classroom.

Maybe some "problematic" phrasing there. Seems less a case that men - as a class, a bit of an abstraction - "tend to be inherently better at science" than one in which there are, maybe, more men who are better at science than there are women - for a wide spectrum of reasons. Sort of a "it's more of a guy thing" which doesn't in the least obviate the fact that there are many women who are better at science - and mathematics [Emmy Noether] - than men. Rather analogous to the case of the disparity in heights:
http://i62.tinypic.com/1zb827l.jpg
Some women are taller [better at science] than some men, even if [a conjecture] there are [marginally] more men who are better at it [taller] than there are women:

"Therefore shoddy and inept application of words lays siege to the intellect in wondrous ways." Novum Organum

No.

[Matt Cavanaugh]

Think about this: Yiannopoulos is arguing that men’s and women’s brains are different, and men are intrinsically better at the science stuff. But Yiannopoulos is a college dropout, twice over, has no background in science at all (just like he has no background in gaming, either, but then no amount of ignorance will stop him from plowing on). It’s not clear what he studied in college, but it seems to have been journalism or English, not science.

Right. It's impossible that men might tend to be inherently better at science than women, cuz one woman is better at science than one man. QED.

And they let this shit-for-brains stand in front of a classroom.

I think SJWs disregard for evidence and their authoritarian take on morality are linked. These are the sort of people who *would* do something hideously immoral like ban men from science if it turned out that they were statistically inferior (certainly they're willing to enact policies penalizing men on a whole based on statistical evidence). Via projection, they assume the rest of us would as well, and therefore reject any data that looks like it might lead to the sort of broad-sweeping social policies that they feel (justifiably) would be sickening.

It's inconceivable to someone like Myers that I might be come to believe women are biologically predisposed to being less talented at science (I don't believe this, but theoretically evidence could change my mind), and still argue passionately that women should be encouraged to enter STEM fields.

I can agree with most of this, but I'm tired of this trope that women ought to be encouraged to do anything. People should be encouraged to think for themselves about what they want to do, and to ignore idiots who might tell them that girls are bad at math or that men shouldn't be nurses. Kids who want to go into science should be told that research is frustrating and difficult, and that the jobs most people want in science require a lot of intense training, and can be hard to land even if you make it through graduate school. They should also be told that the difficulty of your major/grad school etc. isn't a fool proof predictor of your income when you get out. The ones who do it anyway are the ones who should actually pursue a career in science. We don't need the ones who require coaxing.

NB: I am not expressly arguing here that men do tend to be better than women at science, only that Peez' argument contra is asinine.

[Matt Cavanaugh]

There's something to the idea that, if women are underrepresented in a given venue, extra encouragement should be directed to them. You have to walk the knife edge here, you can't be forcing someone to do something they don't want to do, but you also don't want an individual succumbing to the stereotype of their place out of hopelessness. Boiling it down to a maxim, everyone should be encouraged to think of themselves as individuals and to buck any trend they wish to. In practice, I believe that will amount to favoring minorities, as the normals clearly won't benefit from the advice at all (nor will they suffer, except that some of them may be out competed by the entries in the field).

JFK's original (1964) concept of "affirmative action" was simply to remove any artificial obstacles to achievement. In the early 80's in the US, it was transformed into preferential treatment for minorities, as well as quotas.

[Matt Cavanaugh]

What is seam foam?

Girl Answer: a misspelling of a version of light blue.

Guy Answer: a misspelling of that stuff you use to clear your fuel system, valves, and piston-tops.

That shit works.

[Matt Cavanaugh]

Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement
...
From the study above, one might consider whether reducing math anxiety in early elementary teachers (or, reducing early elementary teachers with math anxiety) could help.

Why so many anxious female math teachers in the first place? Perhaps because they were pushed into a field they lacked the natural aptitude or inclination for?

[Matt Cavanaugh]

Well when you look at "gifted" kids a lot of them turn out losers because they have no challenges and they've been told their whole life than they're good so they don't have to study/work for it.

You've just described each year's freshman class at Harvard.

[jet_lagg]

There's something to the idea that, if women are underrepresented in a given venue, extra encouragement should be directed to them. You have to walk the knife edge here, you can't be forcing someone to do something they don't want to do, but you also don't want an individual succumbing to the stereotype of their place out of hopelessness. Boiling it down to a maxim, everyone should be encouraged to think of themselves as individuals and to buck any trend they wish to. In practice, I believe that will amount to favoring minorities, as the normals clearly won't benefit from the advice at all (nor will they suffer, except that some of them may be out competed by the entries in the field).

Should women also get extra encouragement to enter traditionally male careers like mining and felling timber, or are we only talking about the careers that the media likes to hype, like STEM and video game development?

Yes. If they want to. Anyone underrepresented in a field should be encouraged to ignore the stereotype and pursue it, because people are individuals, not statistical groupings.

And FT, I'm seeing more and more why you hate tapatalk. Fuck this quoting

[jet_lagg]

There's something to the idea that, if women are underrepresented in a given venue, extra encouragement should be directed to them. You have to walk the knife edge here, you can't be forcing someone to do something they don't want to do, but you also don't want an individual succumbing to the stereotype of their place out of hopelessness. Boiling it down to a maxim, everyone should be encouraged to think of themselves as individuals and to buck any trend they wish to. In practice, I believe that will amount to favoring minorities, as the normals clearly won't benefit from the advice at all (nor will they suffer, except that some of them may be out competed by the entries in the field).

"the normals" - ?

Was trying to make the argument as generalized as possible. Outliers will benefit from being encouraged to buck the trend (because they are the rare ones who do have the desire and capacity) while the statistically normal individuals won't suffer because they'll do what they want to do anyway, or they'll try to enter a field they're I'll suited for and end up moving to something else (not a big deal in my mind)

[Matt Cavanaugh]

...
While others rely on rigid, unthinking, inflexible dogma. It's pathetic, really.

... the dogma of 'men and women are the same except reproductive organs' is so ludicrous that it's 'not even wrong.' And yet that's where Myers has gone...

He's a joke. Hell, he's beyond a joke.

Peez has painted himself into a corner, as he must feed his Horde this pomo bullshit to keep them around. He sounds like a complete fool whenever he opens his mouth. Why anyone would still rely on him to explain science is baffling.

[acathode]

It's inconceivable to someone like Myers that I might be come to believe women are biologically predisposed to being less talented at science (I don't believe this, but theoretically evidence could change my mind), and still argue passionately that women should be encouraged to enter STEM fields.

One thing that disturbs me in this whole discussion is that people on all sides simply assume that if there's a biological factor behind the differences, this must be a biological difference in talents. Whenever you try to point out that there might be biological reasons for the differences in representation in a field, some snarky SJW will always do the "Oh, so men are just biologically better than women, is that it? Fucking misogynist!!", and all to often people on the other side will try to argue "Yeah that's it!"...

This is utter nonsense, there's a plethora of various factors that could be biological and lead to big differences in representation, without there being any biological, inherit differences in talent (there ofc also could be inherited differences in talent, but it doesn't have to be).

For example, men and women might biologically speaking be completely equal in how good they are at music - however, take a look into the brain of the 17 year old band members rocking it out in their garage, and I'd bet you could see some very "biological" motivations among the young men, that you probably wouldn't find to nearly the same degree in young women musicians. Same thing with comedians, it's not necessarily that "men are funnier than women" - but men sure as hell need to be funnier than women to get laid, and I'd be surprised if that wasn't a pretty big driving force behind the differences in representation.

When being up on a stage in some form seem to do wonders for your sex-life if you're a man (but not so much if you're a women - because when it comes to just sex men barely care if a women is a waitress or a ceo), it really shouldn't come as a surprise that you find a whole bunch of men on stage...

Same thing with power, money, authority, and all that stuff - when those things is to men what of a pair of nice tits and a firm ass is to women, is it really that surprising that men strive a lot harder than women to acquire those things?

When it comes to science and STEM fields, again, you don't need to explain the differences with a biological difference in talent - for example it could simply be that men statistically speaking find more enjoyment in solving the kind of problems presented in those fields than women do. You don't need to necessarily be better than someone else to end up in a particular field of work - you could just find it more fun than the other stuff you have to choose between.

[debaser71]

I've been thinking more about girls' self-confidence in science & math since starting to transcribe the Milo Y & Emily Grossman TV show segment yesterday. I poked around to find a couple more studies, including this one: Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement (PNAS, 2010; full text plus supplement at link). From the abstract on this study of 17 female 1st & 2nd grade teachers and 117 of their students:

By the school years' end,...the more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely girls (but not boys) were to endorse the commonly held stereotype that “boys are good at math, and girls are good at reading” and the lower these girls’ math achievement.

Consider, then, a couple of possible approaches to improving girls' experience of their math & science education. From Grossman, the advice is to make science & math learning environments more nurturing for girls. From the study above, one might consider whether reducing math anxiety in early elementary teachers (or, reducing early elementary teachers with math anxiety) could help. Or, last but not least, from the Hornbeckian school: tell girls during science & math classes that, because it's just a social construct, they're boys. (Best to have that be limited to those classes, though, so the girls' overall school performance doesn't suffer.)

I bolded the part I am responding to. Ever heard of Common Core? It's a elementary school curriculum that (as far as I can tell) is very very weak on math and turns all math into word problem, essay explanations; rather than straight up doing math. Around where I live the math standards are much lower with Common Core than what the school (and state) was teaching previously. Anyway a lot of Common Core is about taking what girls seem to do better (reading and writing essays) and making that the norm for everyone. Now, we have 5th grade students learning about how to explain that a number is greater than another number, instead of learning how to manipulate fractions and ratio's. Also, and related, instead of learning about American history and Thomas Jefferson and stuff, the kids learn about Kwanza or how some girls and their moms (as Christina Hoff Sommers puts it) "won the west".

So maybe the girls might FEEL as though math isn't so hard with Common Core but the result is that both boys and girls aren't really learning the math needed for STEM.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arc ... ds/265444/

Talks about the math.

"Let's look first at the 97 pages of what are called "Content Standards." Many of these standards require that students to be able to explain why a particular procedure works. It's not enough for a student to be able to divide one fraction by another. He or she must also "use the relationship between multiplication and division to explain that (2/3) ÷ (3/4) = 8/9, because 3/4 of 8/9 is 2/3."

It's an odd pedagogical agenda, based on a belief that conceptual understanding must come before practical skills can be mastered. As this thinking goes, students must be able to explain the "why" of a procedure. Otherwise, solving a math problem becomes a "mere calculation" and the student is viewed as not having true understanding.

This approach not only complicates the simplest of math problems; it also leads to delays. Under the Common Core Standards, students will not learn traditional methods of adding and subtracting double and triple digit numbers until fourth grade. (Currently, most schools teach these skills two years earlier.) The standard method for two and three digit multiplication is delayed until fifth grade; the standard method for long division until sixth. In the meantime, the students learn alternative strategies that are far less efficient, but that presumably help them "understand" the conceptual underpinnings. "

[debaser71]

Regarding color. There's a show on Discovery Channel or something that my kids like to watch. Brain Games. In it they tell us that women can see colors of red better because they would forage for fruit. Being able to spot that ripe red fruit was key to survival. Make of that what you will.

[jet_lagg]

Any mathematicians care to weigh in on common core? I am attracted to the approach of teaching the "why" rather than rote learning, but delaying the year a student achieves certain skills is troubling to say the least

[Billy The Hillbilly]

Billy think again 'bouta takin pickturs of Mrs. Benson in her underpants and Billy not convinced itta good idea.

Billy sent Mrs. Benson an e-mail anyway suggestin she take some pickturs of herself inna underpants and put 'em on that there Butterflys & Wheels blog. Mrs. Benson bin complainin that she hava nowhere near as many Tweeter followers as'a Ricky Dawkins. Maybe posin inna underpants bring in some new Tweeter followers fur her.