Perhaps I should have just quoted the part of it I particularly appreciated. Certainly there are claims in there I don't care to defend, and a decidedly non-rigorous, acausal way of describing group selection. But then, it's a speech from one psychologist to another, not an article in a genetics journal.
Specifically, the bit about men exhibiting greater variation in ability 1) is not mere speculation, but visible in measurements 2) has straightforward biological explanations (for one, we have less error correction for anything encoded only on the X chromosome) 3) is difficult to explain in terms of cultural forces 4) helps account for the underrepresentation of women at the top of many fields 5) rarely appears in discussions of gender roles
To say that the roles of women today are not biologically inevitable is a bit like saying that the positions of the planets today are not physically inevitable. Biology is the only root cause available; what we don't know is exactly how constrained the system is, where else we might have ended up in the state space (although anthropology offers some hints). I think the speaker here was careful to distinguish between pointing out "it is more likely we got here through natural forces than a conscious conspiracy" vs. saying "and now we're stuck".
Specifically, the bit about men exhibiting greater variation in ability
1) is not mere speculation, but visible in measurements
2) has straightforward biological explanations (for one, we have less error correction for anything encoded only on the X chromosome)
3) is difficult to explain in terms of cultural forces
4) helps account for the underrepresentation of women at the top of many fields
5) rarely appears in discussions of gender roles
To say that the roles of women today are not biologically inevitable is a bit like saying that the positions of the planets today are not physically inevitable. Biology is the only root cause available; what we don't know is exactly how constrained the system is, where else we might have ended up in the state space (although anthropology offers some hints). I think the speaker here was careful to distinguish between pointing out "it is more likely we got here through natural forces than a conscious conspiracy" vs. saying "and now we're stuck".
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