Why are women different mentally?

Anything to do with gender and the status of women and men.

Moderators: AMod, iMod

Skip
Posts: 2820
Joined: Tue Aug 09, 2011 1:34 pm

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by Skip »

duszek wrote:I don´t know about chess but how about bridge, sudoku and cross-words ?

Has anyone noticed any different natural abilities in these games ?
Anecdotally -
bridge has to be a team effort, best played by persons who understand each other well, over a long time. Whether they're mates or just mates matters less than how well they communicate and how much they practice;
Sudoku seems more popular with women
and cross-words are done by both men and women, predominantly middle-aged and up - which means, more women, since they last longer -
statistically.

In my personal experience (based on a sample of five) the females are better at jigsaw puzzles (patience and colour-sense trump spatial orientation) while the males are marginally better at Scrabble (math and competitiveness trump verbal skill).

Does any of this supply anyone with useful information?
Obvious Leo
Posts: 4007
Joined: Wed May 13, 2015 1:05 am
Location: Australia

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Skip wrote:bridge has to be a team effort, best played by persons who understand each other well, over a long time. Whether they're mates or just mates matters less than how well they communicate and how much they practice;
Exactly so. I've been a bridge player since my early childhood which was over 50 years ago and my brother and I have played at an internationally competitive level for decades on and off. Bridge is all about communication, practice, complete faith in your partner and nerves of steel. It also helps to have a very good grasp of probabilities, but this is a skill which can be learned.
User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Obvious Leo wrote:
Skip wrote:bridge has to be a team effort, best played by persons who understand each other well, over a long time. Whether they're mates or just mates matters less than how well they communicate and how much they practice;
Exactly so. I've been a bridge player since my early childhood which was over 50 years ago and my brother and I have played at an internationally competitive level for decades on and off. Bridge is all about communication, practice, complete faith in your partner and nerves of steel. It also helps to have a very good grasp of probabilities, but this is a skill which can be learned.
I've often wondered what bridge is like. I imagine it to be really difficult. Is it anything like 500? I used to play that a lot. Never won though.
Skip
Posts: 2820
Joined: Tue Aug 09, 2011 1:34 pm

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by Skip »

When someone tried to teach me, I found it difficult, tedious, contentious and a huge waste of time.
Also, I was not very good at it.
Knocked the table over and stomped out of the room... No, that just happened in a fantasy sequence in my head.
They quietly dropped me and found another partner.
Obvious Leo
Posts: 4007
Joined: Wed May 13, 2015 1:05 am
Location: Australia

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by Obvious Leo »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote:I've often wondered what bridge is like. I imagine it to be really difficult.
I learned it as a child because my parents were very keen as well as very skilled players. The rules are actually quite simple but the bidding strategies can be unbelievably complex and in fact it's a game in which you never stop learning new subtleties. Aside from the bidding the actual card-playing strategies are deceptively simple but require intense concentration and a very precise card memory but these things just come with practice.

Nowadays I mostly only play online with my brother who lives in NZ and we get together a few times a year to play in major tournaments in nearby countries. However to rank amongst the top-line players in the world requires the same sort of full-time commitment as a top tennis player or golfer would need to apply, and for only a fraction of the prize-money, I might add. However we've occasionally won enough to cover our travel expenses as well as copious amounts of booze and entertainment in our travels, as brothers are wont to do. Neither of us was ever committed enough to it to become full-time professionals, however, both having careers and families to consider. I can't say I've ever regretted it because it's a peculiar hobby which seems to attract some bizarre characters.
User avatar
Hobbes' Choice
Posts: 8364
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 11:45 am

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

Skip wrote:
duszek wrote:I don´t know about chess but how about bridge, sudoku and cross-words ?

Has anyone noticed any different natural abilities in these games ?
Anecdotally -
bridge has to be a team effort, best played by persons who understand each other well, over a long time. Whether they're mates or just mates matters less than how well they communicate and how much they practice;
Sudoku seems more popular with women
and cross-words are done by both men and women, predominantly middle-aged and up - which means, more women, since they last longer -
statistically.

In my personal experience (based on a sample of five) the females are better at jigsaw puzzles (patience and colour-sense trump spatial orientation) while the males are marginally better at Scrabble (math and competitiveness trump verbal skill).

Does any of this supply anyone with useful information?
There is nothing of any merit here.
Not only is it useless, but I think, inaccurate and only reflects your own experience.
User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

'Women are better at jigsaw puzzles'. Such high praise. :lol:
Skip
Posts: 2820
Joined: Tue Aug 09, 2011 1:34 pm

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by Skip »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote:'Women are better at jigsaw puzzles'. Such high praise. :lol:
Two women and a girl were more adept at assembling the 3-5000 piece puzzles we used to keep on our dining room table under a sheet of plywood and work at about one evening a week when my kids were in their teens. (Hey, it weaned them off the stupid Ouija board!)

It's at least a more accurate statement than "Men are better at chess".
User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

This guy lost his job just for being honest.
''Three years ago, Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard University, claimed that genetic differences between the sexes led to a “different availability of aptitude at the high end”. He was widely derided, which led to his dismissal, but his views are by no means uncommon. In the same year, Paul Irwing and Richard Lynn conducted a review of existing studies on sex differences in intelligence and concluded:

“Different proportions of men and women with high IQs… may go some way to explaining the greater numbers of men achieving distinctions of various kinds for which a high IQ is required, such as chess grandmasters, Fields medallists for mathematics, Nobel prize winners and the like.” ''

Women just seem to be more balanced and 'sane'. Chess Grandmasters do tend to be very strange people indeed, otherwise barely able to tie their shoelaces. I remember joining the chess club at school and was shocked to find I was the only female (my father taught ALL of his children to play chess). The other members of the club were such obnoxious, mean-spirited nerds that I immediately switched to drama.
User avatar
Hobbes' Choice
Posts: 8364
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 11:45 am

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote:This guy lost his job just for being honest.
''Three years ago, Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard University, claimed that genetic differences between the sexes led to a “different availability of aptitude at the high end”. He was widely derided, which led to his dismissal, but his views are by no means uncommon. In the same year, Paul Irwing and Richard Lynn conducted a review of existing studies on sex differences in intelligence and concluded:

“Different proportions of men and women with high IQs… may go some way to explaining the greater numbers of men achieving distinctions of various kinds for which a high IQ is required, such as chess grandmasters, Fields medallists for mathematics, Nobel prize winners and the like.” ''

Women just seem to be more balanced and 'sane'. Chess Grandmasters do tend to be very strange people indeed, otherwise barely able to tie their shoelaces. I remember joining the chess club at school and was shocked to find I was the only female (my father taught ALL of his children to play chess). The other members of the club were such obnoxious, mean-spirited nerds that I immediately switched to drama.
Any teacher who has seen SATS scores knows this. As I said above, men occupy extremes, both low and high whilst women tend to be more similar to each other. This means that men are better than women at every thing, and are worse that women at at every thing.
That ought not to justify any kind of prejudice, because the greatest likelihood is that you just can't tell what a person can do by looking at their tits.
User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Apparently he didn't lose his job after all. Typical internet bad reporting. He just got a lot of flak.
Obvious Leo
Posts: 4007
Joined: Wed May 13, 2015 1:05 am
Location: Australia

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Often the problem with conversations like this is that simple facts can be distorted in the service of a particular ideological position. As a biologist I find it utterly unremarkable that human males and human females have evolved with different skills and personal attributes. Since this has occurred in all other vertebrate species ever to have evolved on our planet it would be quite remarkable if homo were in some way different but he isn't.
I reckon studying these differences is a useful science which has the potential to tell us more about ourselves as a species but using such knowledge as a weapon in some kind of "war of the sexes" is simply stupid. Men and women are different. So what? Who would want it otherwise?
Skip
Posts: 2820
Joined: Tue Aug 09, 2011 1:34 pm

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by Skip »

Who makes up the IQ tests?
Obvious Leo
Posts: 4007
Joined: Wed May 13, 2015 1:05 am
Location: Australia

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Skip wrote:Who makes up the IQ tests?
I don't really think that any psychologists these days kid themselves that IQ tests are in any sense a test of human intelligence, skip. They are specifically designed to test for a narrow range of attributes which may be of commercial value to the plutocracy and that's about it. The purpose of mass education hasn't changed since the industrial revolution, namely the provision of factory fodder for the dark satanic mills. As an educator Hobbes may now proceed to bite my head off but I assure him that I speak as a generalisation and that there are some significant exceptions.
User avatar
Hobbes' Choice
Posts: 8364
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 11:45 am

Re: Why are women different mentally?

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

Obvious Leo wrote:
Skip wrote:Who makes up the IQ tests?
I don't really think that any psychologists these days kid themselves that IQ tests are in any sense a test of human intelligence, skip. They are specifically designed to test for a narrow range of attributes which may be of commercial value to the plutocracy and that's about it. The purpose of mass education hasn't changed since the industrial revolution, namely the provision of factory fodder for the dark satanic mills. As an educator Hobbes may now proceed to bite my head off but I assure him that I speak as a generalisation and that there are some significant exceptions.
You can keep your head. As an educator I was never mainstream and always challenged the sausage-machine of establishment educational policy. I was not alone. Primary teaching until age 11, and then post 18 teaching lends itself to more subversive teaching methods.
The worst time for learning is the most highly prescribed period of the teen years.
But it depends on the educator and the particular subjects being taught.

IQ is a totally blunt instrument: centred on white, male, urban, literal, 2 dimensional, numerate intelligence biases. It favours test experienced participants, and its relevance is of dubious significance.
Post Reply