I'm a female computer scientist / developer, and after my experience both online, at school, and at work, I would really just rather ignore it. I went to a college with 4:1 ratio of male to female.
I've had periods in my life where I felt like I was the beautiful princess at the school, and periods where I feel like a somewhat disfigured monster with an average intellect. It really sucks when culture places so much emphasis on appearance, and I don't have that when I engage in dialogue and activity online.
The fact that I've been able to think about this since I was maybe 14 years old, on a hypothetical and applicative level, shows that there is more that varies to predicting individual differences than what these tests measure, and what causes are inferred, as the act of measuring may change the outcome. Males may take more risks because culture rewards them if they do, supposedly, and I as a female have sought stability, predictability and consistency in my education. When people are trying very hard to either sleep with you, hit on you, or even screw with you (because for some reason, your existence bothers them), it's very hard to know whether you are learning the truth, or whether the truth has been distorted, made easier to swallow, or prepackaged otherwise, because of your teachers' and classmates' perceptive biases.
I take a lot of risks in learning. I try to avoid taking those risks in real life, because while at one point, I did, I found myself on the precipice of losing almost everything.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, that the individual is different from the aggregate. But even myself, I am a hypocrite, because these are cynical inferences I made along the way, about my education, while I was receiving it. And I made those inferences mostly from having a behind the curtain peek into boys clubs, online. I was judging my classmates and peers by assholes on the internet, and that really isn't right, but neither is it right to assume that a person fits on the distributive curve of which they can be categorized into, based on a very small subselection of data.
Thinking about this has led me to the conclusion, that I really don't know a lot of things, and it seems neither does anyone else. Every point in time can be as unpredictable as infinity. People make so many assumptions about what is stuffed up in other people's heads, what guides how they think, what they do with that knowledge, how it directs them, and the resulting thoughts, the determination of envisioning, assisting, and planning the life paths of others.
My greatest comfort level is being an anonymous blob with no face, on the internet, where I learn a little bit of haskell here and there, and maybe find some elegant nuance and subtlety in code, computational theory, mathematics, philosophy. It's a bit hypocritical for me to share my gender willingly, over and over, but at this rate, I go through probably hundreds of aliases in a year.
Thank you though, for clarifying an important point concisely. The last time sex differences came up on a forum, I don't remember feeling quite so calm.
A cousin of mine with a high IQ (TNS level) and who would be categorized as a 'cute blond' expressed similar laments. Moderately sociable as a kid, reasonably well-heeled, one who loved spending most of her time devouring science and math tomes, conducted experiments on her own; an individual. Then adolescence hit coupled with menarche and amplified social pressure to 'fit in' which caused her sense of strong individualization to wane. In late teens she talked to me about majoring in law or sociology and I questioned: 'is that YOU?' What followed was a long diatribe, de rerum natura, which had the earmarks of a 'something' being repressed. Using salient observations like those opined by Marilyn vos Savant in her old 'ask Marilyn' column it was conceded that individualization and mutualization are sustainable while open-end charity with no sense of culturally enforced mutualization is fatally maladaptive, given received human nature. And the old social dictates evolved for survival in times prior to the advent of modern medicine were just so THEN but this is NOW. And the great seminal inventors and scientists of the late 19th century, almost all of whom were male, were individualists by temperament who while developing their ideas would partition themselves off from the vicissitudes of life for the duration. That exchange was capped-off with a paraphrase of an extract from the 'Bulfinch's Mythology' section 'Glaucus and Scylla'. Glaucus was a river god who developed the hots for a maiden called Scylla, who scorned his every approach. Retreating in to sulk mode he was given a pep talk by a mentor goddess Circe (where the word cereal comes from). To paraphrase: Recognize and objectify your worth. Then realize you are someone to be sought after rather than one who seeks in vain. Be willing to meet people half way. But if they spurn you, spurn them! Why should they disturb your Wa? (Wa = inner harmony (jp); we were both into Japanese and anime). In any event, my cousin segued back into math and IT, is herself, and suffers no fools lightly (IE, abides no BS).
I've had periods in my life where I felt like I was the beautiful princess at the school, and periods where I feel like a somewhat disfigured monster with an average intellect. It really sucks when culture places so much emphasis on appearance, and I don't have that when I engage in dialogue and activity online.
The fact that I've been able to think about this since I was maybe 14 years old, on a hypothetical and applicative level, shows that there is more that varies to predicting individual differences than what these tests measure, and what causes are inferred, as the act of measuring may change the outcome. Males may take more risks because culture rewards them if they do, supposedly, and I as a female have sought stability, predictability and consistency in my education. When people are trying very hard to either sleep with you, hit on you, or even screw with you (because for some reason, your existence bothers them), it's very hard to know whether you are learning the truth, or whether the truth has been distorted, made easier to swallow, or prepackaged otherwise, because of your teachers' and classmates' perceptive biases.
I take a lot of risks in learning. I try to avoid taking those risks in real life, because while at one point, I did, I found myself on the precipice of losing almost everything.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, that the individual is different from the aggregate. But even myself, I am a hypocrite, because these are cynical inferences I made along the way, about my education, while I was receiving it. And I made those inferences mostly from having a behind the curtain peek into boys clubs, online. I was judging my classmates and peers by assholes on the internet, and that really isn't right, but neither is it right to assume that a person fits on the distributive curve of which they can be categorized into, based on a very small subselection of data.
Thinking about this has led me to the conclusion, that I really don't know a lot of things, and it seems neither does anyone else. Every point in time can be as unpredictable as infinity. People make so many assumptions about what is stuffed up in other people's heads, what guides how they think, what they do with that knowledge, how it directs them, and the resulting thoughts, the determination of envisioning, assisting, and planning the life paths of others.
My greatest comfort level is being an anonymous blob with no face, on the internet, where I learn a little bit of haskell here and there, and maybe find some elegant nuance and subtlety in code, computational theory, mathematics, philosophy. It's a bit hypocritical for me to share my gender willingly, over and over, but at this rate, I go through probably hundreds of aliases in a year.
Thank you though, for clarifying an important point concisely. The last time sex differences came up on a forum, I don't remember feeling quite so calm.