Book Review: Delusions of Gender, by Cordelia Fine

Dec 07, 2010 21:12

One-line summary: A dense but accessible examination of the nature vs. nurture debate as it pertains to neuroscience.


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highly recommended, non-fiction, books, reviews, science

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Random Thoughts anonymous December 8 2010, 11:14:58 UTC
I was reminded of this: http://xkcd.com/775/

"Contrary to the old saying, statistics don't lie, but they can certainly be misunderstood." Or, as Penn and Teller said, "Numbers aren't bull****, bull**** is bull****." (I'm not sure if it's okay to swear here).

Intra-group differences are always greater than inter-group differences. Even if men were better than woman at math on average, there would still be lots of individual women better at math than lots of individual men. So I agree that this kind of research might be interesting in the abstract, but it doesn't have very many policy implications.

Besides, gender doesn't exist anyway. No, seriously--try coming up with a definition of "male" or "female." (I took a philosophy class on gender...you talk about these kinds of things)

-TealTerror

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Re: Random Thoughts inverarity December 8 2010, 18:54:55 UTC
(I'm not sure if it's okay to swear here).

Have you read my blog? ;)

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Re: Random Thoughts anonymous December 9 2010, 02:08:39 UTC
...Maybe? >_> I couldn't remember offhand, okay?

-TealTerror

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kerneyhead December 8 2010, 20:45:09 UTC
This reminds me of the arguements which were had at the Potter sights neither of us visit much anymore. Someone would have a good long arguement why a next gen character might be different from their parents and might be in a different house.

Someone else would say, "they're a Weasley, of course they'll be in Gryffindor, love Quiditch etc. Now shut up."

Here, someone is saying, 'it's more complicated' and the other side is saying "boys and girls are just different," now shut up.

It still comes down to one side saying, 'of course we're right, now shut up and don't think about it.'

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