Asymmetrical Information

A matter of opinion that cannot be proved.

Well, Stove doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I can see why someone else--say, a person of inferior intellectual capacity--might find him persuasive . . . :)

Wonder what he'd make of the current demographics of men vs. women in (undergraduate) higher education in the US & UK.

Time isn't kind to certain prejudices.

I'm not sure how pursuasive it was, but it was interesting. Although he did dismiss out of hand the idea that man's superior performance throughout history (accepting his premise for a minute)can be attibuted to another trait, such as aggressiveness, rather than intellectual capacity. One seems to fit with his theory as well as the other.

AFAIK there is one notable physiological difference in men and women -- men are programmed so that shortly before birth, a hormonal reaction attacks the communications interlink between the two brain hemispheres. As a result, men on average have less communication between the two hemispheres of their brain than do women on average.

The starting size of this link and the degree of this hormonal reaction is not fixed and there are are exceptions in both cases, of course. (I would expect to see two bell curves with notable overlap in the center but I haven't actually done serious research into this.) However some potential consequences are:

1. spatial placement -- on average, women are better at it because they don't have to separately switch between thinking of what the object is (left brain) and what it looks like (right brain). Similarly, they tend to generate images in response to words and vice-versa without having to mentally shift their focus.

2. Intuition -- women on average may be better at detecting when a person is being dishonest because while the left brain is analyzing the person's logic, the right brain may be picking up on cues like shifty eyes or other signs of nervousness, and the two halves are responding to both left- and right-hemisphere cues simultaneously.

3. Logic -- men on average are stronger in mathematics and other areas that emphasize dominance in the left hemisphere.

4. Analytical reasoning -- because men tend to think in one hemisphere or the other, on average they are more likely to be able to reason out and follow through on a critical decision without being clouded by emotional conflicts (even though said emotions may indeed be present).

I wouldn't call this kind of theorizing a basis for claiming net superiority, but the extreme sex-neutralizers (typically but not exclusively radical feminists) have a tall case to prove in claiming that the only difference between the sexes is genetalia and hormone balance.

“A matter of opinion that cannot be proved.”

That’s absolutely correct. Do you also remember the controversy over “The Bell Curve?” Any question pertaining to human intelligence is inherently impossible to answer in an infallible manner. We can only speculate and offer tentative theories. Where do we draw the line between nature and nurture? This is an area of scientific investigation where Karl Popper is most useful.

I see no reason why gender isn’t an important factor in matters of intelligence. This seems eminently sensible. After all, the overwhelming evidence suggest that there are indeed real differences between men and women.

Philosophy's 2001 edition, vol. 1 (available online from journals.cambridge.org) contains a solid response by Jenny Teichman.

It is perhaps impossible to *prove* this one way or the other in an absolute way, but Stove sure didn't bring anything new to the argument.

First, we have the unoriginal observation that women have not performed as well as men over historical periods, a fact that is hardly surprising to anyone paying attention to how women have generally been treated historically.

Then we have some amateur evolutionary pyschology to explain this, followed by some incorrect Darwinian theory.

And then, to top it off, we have the statement that test results of any kind are useless because all the practitioners -- every single one of them! -- would hide any results that showed men performing better than women.

It is certainly possible that men and women differ biologically in various aspects of mental acuity, but Stove's essay has virtually nothing of any substance to say about this one way or the other. It wouldn't even make a good blog post, let alone a genuine scholarly contribution.

“It is perhaps impossible to *prove* this one way or the other in an absolute way, but Stove sure didn't bring anything new to the argument.”

Kevin Drum apparently feels uncomfortable with the concept of proof. Nonetheless, I agree with his overall assessment of the late David Stove’s essay. The latter gentleman should have been far more cautious. Only a few days ago, I read some comments by a woman who was severely taken to task by a female grade school teacher when she did well on her science tests. Good girls weren’t suppose to upstage the boys. Thus, the nurture aspect cannot be ignored when one theorizes on issues of gender and intelligence.

Kimball's still the Stove booster I see.

Everything DCS wrote is a delight. Plenty of it is online BTW, including one or two complete books.

"Nothing else would convince me, or even begin to do so. In particular, no experiments of any kind, however well-conducted, would weigh with me, if their results were inconsistent with the verdict of ordinary experience. If intellectual performance continued to be, as it has always been, unequal, in all the limitless and largely-undesigned variety of life, then that is the evidence I would trust. If all the educationists (etc.) in the world, even without the influence of fraud or self-deception, reported equal intellectual performance by the juveniles of either sex, it would cut no ice with me; and similarly if all the geneticists and molecular biologists could not detect, by their most refined experiments, any physical basis for the unequal performance of the two sexes. I would still stand by the evidence, raw and unanalysed as it is, of a long and varied experience, if that still testified to inequality."

HIS ordinary experience, that is -- which turns out entirely to consist of the repeated statement that the lesser tendency of women to take on intellectual, political or business-directing jobs throughout history can't possibly be due to the major legal obstacles -- and the cultural biases which motivated those legal obstacles -- which have dominated all of human history. Why? Well, just because... Against this, please note, we're supposed to ignore the evidence of actual IQ tests (run -- according to Stove -- for most of the past century by male psychologists who have been completely terrorized and corrupted into lying about their results by the Massive Pressures of the Feminist Conspiracy. Right.) What we have here, in short, is simply a cracker-barrel philosopher cum crackpot.

"There is something profoundly refreshing about breaking through the knee-jerk 'but that can't possibly be true because everyone says it isn't, and besides, that would be horrifying!' reaction that one senses in oneself and others to even considering such a topic."

In that case, I can't wait for Ms. McArdle's delighted reaction to the profoundly refreshing views found in "Mein Kampf".

>>This is an area of scientific investigation where Karl Popper is most useful.

Still pretending to have read books you haven't read, Thompson?

and meanwhile:

>>In that case, I can't wait for Ms. McArdle's delighted reaction to the profoundly refreshing views found in "Mein Kampf".

Don't hold your breath. Despite repeatedly claiming to be an expert on misuese of statistics, our hostess still claims that she "has no opinion one way or the other" on "The Bell Curve"!

Isn't there some rule about invoking Hitler? Goodwin's something-or-other?

Come on, Dave -- it isn't always inappropriate to bring up Hitler. I repeat: if Megan is going to rhapsodize about some destructive crank just because he's "refreshingly horrifying", why doesn't she go for the Original? Besides, Hitler does resemble Stove in two other important ways: he was very big on Gigantic Conspiracies, and he was very skeptical of scientific research: "There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or in the scientific sense."

"Still pretending to have read books you haven't read, Thompson?"

Either be specific in your criticisms--or shut up. I have absolutely no problem when somebody can point to an error on my part. You, however, merely indulge in cheap shot tactics. Please try to at least pretend that you have some dignity and intellectually honesty.

This reminds me of the comment attributed to the wife of a British churchman on the subject of evolution: "Let us hope that it isn't true, or if it is, that it doesn't become widely known."

Yes, Bruce. It's perfectly reasonable to compare Stove to Hitler.

If you have a sense of proportion that's completely dysfunctional, that is.

The comments on the article are as interesting as the article itself.

They exhibit, most profoundly, how the reilgious-type view of intellectual equality has taken hold. Many seem loathe even to consider the argument as an exercise in thought. Still others leap to the--often quite subtle ad hominem attack rather than even attempt an actual answer.

Besides the questions put forth in the article itself one should also ask why there is such demand that the intellectual capacity of the sexes be equal.

As pointed out in the article, at one point popular sentiment agreed with the purported experiential performce exhibited. Now it does not. What has changed?

David, it's perfectly reasonable to compare Stove to Hitler in reply to someone who announces that she enjoys reading Stove just because he's "refreshingly horrifying". If Stove actually roused any productive thought, that would be a different matter -- but his arguments, as I pointed out, aren't just wrong, they're ridiculous hogwash. When I see any evidence of a sexual difference in IQ in actual tests (with the possible exception of math, where there are some indications that men really may be more innately competent), I'll believe it. Until then, no ravings about the concealment of such differences by a Century-Long Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy that forces psychologists to lie about the results of their IQ tests is going to persuade me.

Footnote: Stove, I repeat, is both a cracker-barrel philosopher and a paranoid crackpot -- two tags you could also hang on Hitler, whose actual evidence for his beliefs was every bit as good as Stove's.

Except for the power-grabbing and ten or so million corpses, I'd say you've got a point. The difference is that little proportion thing I was attempting to point out.

OK; how much damage would Stove's idiotic views do if they ever actually caught hold with people in power (as they were frequently held by people in power in the past), and the government started radically refusing to educate women (or letting them vote) because "they're innately much more stupid than men"? Not another Holocaust, but a hell of a lot of damage.

And, no, David, I'm well aware that Stove's views wouldn't kill nearly as many people as Hitler's did. I was, of course, always aware of it. For the zillionth time, I repeat: if Ms. McArdle is going to cheer some destructive idiot just because his views are "refreshingly horrifying", just how far does she propose to go with this interesting philosophy?

So, your point is, if one should be willing to explore a line of thought a little in one direction, one should absolutely have to pursue that line to its most absurd extreme? I'm not seeing why that has to be true, Bruce.

One can be a little conservative and not be on a path that inevitably leads to pollution of natural resources, enriching oneself at the expense of the poor, etc. Just as one can be a little liberal without being on a path that inevitably leads to totalitarianism and the murder of those who don't see it your way.

Am I getting through yet?

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