16 Nov 08
By limiting the number of people in the study, some might call it cherry picking. In any case, you are saying that the old study is meaningless today anyhow. Why you would bring up a study and then say that it is meaningless is beyond me.
In any case, having serarte scores for each kind of competition would take care of itself. But I'm guessing that would step on some Politcially Correct toes, so it isn't going to happen.
19 Nov 08
Originally posted by Tsekos the punkI guess they can but there does seem to be a lack of female chess players esp. on RHP. in fact I've never met a girl who has had the remotest interest in chess although I am playing a good female opponent atm!
Do you think that women can make as good chess players as men?
What's your opinion?
26 Nov 08
Originally posted by BusygirlSince I am in it, I got an autographed copy.
Haven't read the book, sorry. Your view?
The book actually addresses many of the topics in this thread.
Women's only tournaments are not necessary but as long as they are stil set up I will play.
I have taught young players for many years and the difference between male and female play is primarily cultural. At around 7 or 8 years old the sexes are about even. But a 12 year old girl predominantly will get negative peer pressure if she beats the boys.
26 Nov 08
Is there an age or "maturity milestone" at which you see more women returning to the game? I, for instance, have almost finished raising our kids, have a solid income, stable marriage. As a young woman my feminist heart would be so enraged by the existence of this thread that I might have stomped off the site permanently. Now it makes me want to learn really well so I can kick some butts and take some names. Eventually maybe I won't care how moronic some men are (there are many women just as stupid - no generalization for the entire sex intended) and I'll just ignore them. I'm not quite there yet.
26 Nov 08
1 edit
Originally posted by recumbentPlease tell me what this even means. For instance, plenty of intuition is completely unemotional, at least in some (common) senses of those words, but you've lumped them together in a "side". Also, you've given no evidence that the deductive aspects of chess are the difficult parts (in fact there is a lot more to chess than deduction, although I'm making no claims either way about the effects of deductive abilities, whatever they are, on chess abilities). Also, even supposing your evidence is correct and well-defined, drawing simple all-caps conclusions of the type you did is not really justified. What does "men think..." mean? I can understand "the [some measure of central tendency by some metric] man thinks..." or "84% of men think..." or "men are more likely than women to [perform some cognitive taks] by [some well-defined method]...", but your claim of an "innate biological advantage for chess" is, according to you, the sort of thing a woman would write, and according to me, the type of word salad that usually results when people over-interpret their evidence.
O.K., AFTER CONSIDERING ALL OF THE ABOVE, PLUS MORE, THE EVIDENCE IS THAT MEN THINK WITH THE RATIONAL, DEDUCTIVE AND LOGICAL SIDE OF THEIR BRAINS, WHILE WOMEN USE THE EMOTIONAL AND INTUITIVE SIDE. SO MEN HAVE AN INNATE BIOLOGICAL ADVANTAGE FOR CHESS GAMES ACCORDING TO THE FACTS!
In the words of Mary Daly, "Man, sit down."
26 Nov 08
3 edits
Originally posted by Busygirl"Maturity milestone" also brings up another phenomenon for me, which I think is the only real gender difference for which I have consistent evidence. This is that, at least in the cultures I've seen firsthand, social pressure generally affects (for good and for ill) males and females on different time scales (women I think are on average influenced by social pressure very strongly for a short period of time, usually between the ages of maybe 12 and 20, men in more insidious ways all their lives). Some activities are best done in the sort of big obsessive bursts that are incompatible with social pressure, and if those activities are the sort of thing where getting one's start as a teenager is a major determinant of later success, then I can see why such activities tend to feature a majority of men, for reasons that have nothing to do with concepts of "natural ability" (which, in complicated human pursuits, is rarely the same thing for two different 'masters' of the same field anyway).
Is there an age or "maturity milestone" at which you see more women returning to the game? I, for instance, have almost finished raising our kids, have a solid income, stable marriage. As a young woman my feminist heart would be so enraged by the existence of this thread that I might have stomped off the site permanently. Now it makes me want to learn re alization for the entire sex intended) and I'll just ignore them. I'm not quite there yet.
EDIT So to comment on your question, I think the key to making sure peoples' interests aren't quashed is either to make activities which usually reward starting young accessible to those with more years (cf. Grandma Moses and painting or Leonard Cohen and making records), or to change what sorts of social pressures we expose the young to. For certain abstract activities like chess, the latter strategy seems more efficient -- it's time we put a stop to high school 🙂.
26 Nov 08
Originally posted by ChronicLeakyYou're doing the same mistake of interpreting some empirical correlation with the cause you like the best. You have no appropriate identification test that allows you to claim that such differences are either cultural or genetic. It goes both ways.
"Maturity milestone" also brings up another phenomenon for me, which I think is the only real gender difference for which I have consistent evidence. This is that, at least in the cultures I've seen firsthand, social pressure generally affects (for good and for ill) males and females on different time scales (women I think are on average influenced by ...[text shortened]... he latter strategy seems more efficient -- it's time we put a stop to high school 🙂.
26 Nov 08
Originally posted by Palynka"for me, which I think" was a signal that this conclusion was anecdotal (based pretty much solely on people I went to high school with [for the general part] and female mathematicians I know [for the specific part]). I never claimed to be making anything other than an observation, which, if it claims anything at all, makes the claim "this observation may be worth phrasing clearly and verifying".
You're doing the same mistake of interpreting some empirical correlation with the cause you like the best. You have no appropriate identification test that allows you to claim that such differences are either cultural or genetic. It goes both ways.
26 Nov 08
Originally posted by ChronicLeakyI'm asking you why do you think like that, when you have no evidence to help you distinguish the two hypothesis.
"[b]for me, which I think" was a signal that this conclusion was anecdotal (based pretty much solely on people I went to high school with [for the general part] and female mathematicians I know [for the specific part]). I never claimed to be making anything other than an observation, which, if it claims anything at all, makes the claim "this observation may be worth phrasing clearly and verifying".[/b]
26 Nov 08
1 edit
Originally posted by PalynkaI do have anecdotal evidence, which is why I claimed to have observed an incidence of a phenomenon.
I'm asking you [b]why do you think like that, when you have no evidence to help you distinguish the two hypothesis.[/b]
However, there aren't two competing hypotheses, because the hypothesis about "innate ability" hasn't defined its basic notion. Not enough is known about the cognitive processes that underlie chess (nor is it even known that high chess ability is in all people the result of the same cognitive processes) to even make a sensible hypothesis about those processes being more a feature of male than female thought.
The other hypothesis is weakly supported by evidence that I have at hand and by basic facts about the world, although the example I have in mind is not chess, but mathematics, with which I am more familiar and about which the same gender-arguments occur. This is an abstract activity in the sense that it does not require a great deal of practical experience and is therefore accessible to young people. On the other hand, to do mathematics at a high level almost always requires a great deal of technical knowledge, and so it is overwhelmingly common that people who do it at a high level had a strong interest in it or closely related things from a young age. It follows that if some group of people tends to be unable or unwilling to feed such an interest at a young age, then they will be underrepresented in the population of mathematicians (this is probably even more true of high-level chess, and many other pursuits). Thus a sufficient cause for the underrepresentation of women in mathematics would consist of a reason why women are on average less likely than men to pursue this sort of interest at a young age.
In mathematics and most other technical fields, this underrepresentation is becoming less true with time, which is evidence against the hypothesis that there are neurological reasons for the underrepresentation, since presumably neurological gender differences take much more than a couple of generations to change.
Generally, facts about populations of humans are attributed to biological or social causes. For reasons like the above, and because there are literally no differences in the conduct of mathematical research which can both be attributed to the gender of the relevant mathematician and which survive in print*, I think that a biological explanation for the underrepresentation is weak (yet another piece of evidence that the cause is broadly social is that until relatively recently in this society, women were underrepresented in many professional fields, technical and otherwise).
Thus far my reasoning involves no anecdotal evidence (and actually consists mostly of looking for an appropriate hypothesis). However, the reasons why I suggested the hypothesis I did are anecdotal, but I suspect that they are part of a wide body of similar anecdotes. In fact, I'm confident that I could define "social pressure" much more clearly than the "innate ability" camp can tell me what "innate chess ability" is, and that I could find data on social pressure which match my anecdotal data.
*This would be an interesting wager/experiment: peer-review boards should be asked to determine whether given submitted papers were written by men or women.
26 Nov 08
Originally posted by BusygirlYou said it!
Is there an age or "maturity milestone" at which you see more women returning to the game? I, for instance, have almost finished raising our kids, have a solid income, stable marriage. As a young woman my feminist heart would be so enraged by the existence of this thread that I might have stomped off the site permanently. Now it makes me want to learn re ...[text shortened]... alization for the entire sex intended) and I'll just ignore them. I'm not quite there yet.
A woman is usually willing (and expected) to sacrifice most anything for family while the male of our species is not considered "negligent" for putting other things first. That is the constant cultural pressure.
Let go of the guilt and recognize that it is self imposed.
Other people's attitudes and problems are not yours'. Just play chess..
You will be there soon.