I find it funny that so much scientific research attempts to prove the existence of a biological contrast that's blatantly obvious, but which has been completely deconstructed and obscured by modern literary theory/philosophy.
My thought exactly: we've gone so far afield with this ridiculous notion of "sameness" between sexes that we actually now need "serious" research to "debunk" what was so obviously never true. "This just in: women and men are not exactly the same!"
The real problem is that our society tends to equate sameness with acceptability as its preferred mode of "tolerance". This has the paradoxical effect of re-inforcing the negative ways we view our differences (e.g. discrimination). That is, the desire to claim that we are all exactly the same is an implicit statement that it would be somehow problematic if we were not.
So, the fact that we are obviously different means that we are attempting to sell oursleves a lie that we never buy, while allowing our negative feelings about our very real differences go unchecked.
The problem is that while on average there are significant differences between men and women, the individual variation within men and within women is so much larger than these sex-based differences that sex is not a good predictor for behavior in the majority of the cases.
Well, I'm not so sure how constructive it is to try making behavioral predictions about people based on general categories (race, sex, etc.) in the first place. I think it's far more useful to seek understanding and respect.
The idea that boys need exposure to women before adulthood, with the exception of their mother, is a relatively modern one. The extent to which the modern west mixes the sexes through education and other social activities is unprecedented, so the Middle East is not nearly alone in this respect.
Of course, things change in adulthood, and if young Middle Eastern men who would normally be entering stable relationships with women are prevented from doing so, I can imagine how that would enable angry jihadists. But at that age, the blame probably lies with other social/economic factors and less with their family unit.
> The idea that boys need exposure to women before adulthood, with the exception of their mother, is a relatively modern one. The extent to which the modern west mixes the sexes through education and other social activities is unprecedented, so the Middle East is not nearly alone in this respect.
That's true, but if the prosperity and peace of the modern west also are relatively modern and unusual, perhaps the exposure to women has a positive effect.
At the same time, it seems like marriage is much more costly and difficult for men to achieve in much of the Middle East/South Asia. So you still have a larger population of unmarried men without many marriage prospects.
The major restraining factor on young men in a village or tribal setting was always the rest of the village. When the demographics became unbalanced (war, famine) then young gangs were always to be feared (Peter Pans lost boys would not have been cute)
We are fortunate in having overcome hunger in 4/5ths of the world - but it has left a lot of time on people's hands compared to a hunter gather lifestyle and a lot of unsupervised time similarly
That said - holy moley! this is insane!
But does this work for other sexual choice communities? I suppose there must have been class divides where "working class" men were more likely to go to jail so changing the sexual choice landscape? Gay men?! Ex-military? Prior to public transport was there geographic boundaries? Education?
This is a fascinating subject - why are black women limiting themselves to a reduced choice of black men when presumably other races are open? What is it that makes that choice / boundaries? Clearly parental type must have a big impact, but what else?
This is an indictment of US post-slavery culture to be sure, but thinking about it it is massively wider in scope.
> We are fortunate in having overcome hunger in 4/5ths of the world - but it has left a lot of time on people's hands compared to a hunter gather lifestyle and a lot of unsupervised time similarly
Actually, some studies have shown that hunter-gatherers have much more free time than we do. Our wants grow more quickly than our technology can satisfy them.
But this "free time" came at the cost of constantly having to scavenge for more food, move to new areas, fight for survival, etc.. I see primitivists hawking this on hacker news quite a lot now, but you can post that link a hundred times, it still won't make 10k BC any more appealing than 2015.
It turns out that after you feed, shelter, and clothe people, they still want more stuff. What a fucking surprise. But at least I'm not starving, freezing, naked, bleeding out on the plains after being gored by a rhino or squashed by a mammoth.
"Is Marriage for White People?" attempts to answer that question. As I remember it, the main answer was that black women don't want to date outside their race.
But - why? Because their fathers were black and so they associate positive feeling with that colour? Why skin colour? Why not height or body type or behaviour?
What about social pressure (you are a "race traitor" fords ting non blacks). Is it an anti white thing? Is the proportion of Hispanic dating higher? What about comparing across cultures - is the incidence of dating cross race lower than in say the UK?
The fact that we are raising race to its own singular cause for this sort of marriage-limiter shows how much race issues have a grip on our societies, but it's interesting to think around the subject.
Still would be interested to know how one can find a epidemiological "natural" experiment to solve this.
Race is simply a salient category in American life, that shapes people's social experiences in a wide variety of ways.
It's also pretty ordinary for people to prefer mates that have a broadly similar life experience and perspective as themselves. It's easier to sustain a relationship when you have more common ground.
I read that article, and articles like it. They all leave out one thing, and I'll get hammered for stating this, and it's only my hummable opinion.
As much as people want to to homogenize the sexes, their are differences in factors that determine desirability.
Powerful women(degrees, income, position in society, etc.) are judged differently
in my surrounding(I said in my surroundings, antidotal, don't kill me); than powerful men.
Are a lot of women are attracted to powerful men--yes, for the majority. Unless the man has horrid genes, and even then they line up. The man with the biggest cave still seems to attract to most--especially later in life.
It works in the opposite direction for women. I have never met a man(except in scripts, on t.v.) that judges women on degrees, or wealth, or status in society. I have never heard a man say, "I find women in power/authority sexy!" I don't know why. I hope it changes. I just think we forget about millions of years of biology--men are looking for good genes, a kind disposition--maybe someone to raise the spawn?
Yes, it's wrong. I'm just tired of hearing "Why is she single--she is so accomplished?" Yes, I hope it changes.
Go ahead kill me. There's too many examples to list, and it's politically incorrect to even talk about. Again, I'm sorry if I offended anyone.
It's not offensive, it's just yet another example of "every anecdote I have from this specific culture supports X!! Why don't we just admit that X is clearly biological and not a property of culture at all!??!"
The OkCupid research shouldn't be presented as some universal scientific fact. It doesn't account for socioeconomic backgrounds for one, nor does it account for country of origin. Having lived in Africa, Europe and the US, it's clear that interracial dating carries much more historical baggage in the US than it does in Europe and Africa. It's also probably clear to most people in the US, that acceptance of interracial relationships has changed markedly in the past decade alone. A second OkCupid study in 2019 would very likely show significantly different results.
The OKCupid analyis is based on US dating data...right? Why would anyone try to analogize that to universal human behavior, rather than taking it as a description of the situation in the US?
One thing that was striking to me was the map showing the male:female ratio among the black population in the US. Without using any actual statistical tools, it's apparent that areas with a higher black population also have fewer men for every woman.
>The N.Y.U. political psychologist John Jost made the point even more strongly, calling Haidt’s remarks “armchair demography.” Jost wrote, “Haidt fails to grapple meaningfully with the question of why nearly all of the best minds in science find liberal ideas to be closer to the mark with respect to evolution, human nature, mental health, close relationships, intergroup relations, ethics, social justice, conflict resolution, environmental sustainability, and so on.”
A comment meant to combat Haidt's criticism ends up embodying it.
There is something to be said for the notion that professors or any public intellectual will bias away from conservatism -- it is the job of a public intellectual in the humanities or social sciences (at least public intellectuals of the past, before non-academics with business degrees took over any and all decision-making in American research institutions) to think critically about and challenge the status quo and the general structure of society, and conservatives almost by definition support the status quo, so it is altogether unsurprising to see fewer conservatives in professorial positions in these disciplines.
However I think here the issue is that the lack of conservatives in social psychology obscures the fact that it is a discipline with almost no real content -- they ask questions and do studies which can provide any result they wish, so the group of people engaged in the science just imprint their own beliefs on it -- getting 'data' and 'studies' that exactly conform with their worldview, not coincidentally. In order to provide basic rigor to the science (and to provide any hope of ending the current replication crisis) there needs to be scientists employing the same methods but who expect radically different (socially conservative) outcomes. Currently the best way to see which method or explanation a psychology study finds evidence for is not to read the study, but rather to read the bio of the first author, and find his or her pet theory. This is the problem at hand. The lack of intellectual diversity in the discipline just allows the intellectual farce to plod along unexposed.
>It's 2014, I thought the sillyness about being addicted to video games and computer was over. Apparently not.
It's never going to be over, as long as young children have access to technology.
HN seems to preach a perverse gospel about this subject: that you should never limit a child's technology access, because not only will nothing bad come out of, but in fact, it will make them more capable. It will turn them into developers and engineers!
I'm guessing the reason HN thinks this way is because they themselves got into technology in the first place through such avenues: dicking around as a kid, sometimes with the help of their parents, sometimes contrary to their wishes. If THEY had been restricted, they wouldn't be where they are today.
But this reason suffers from selection bias. While people like yourself (unless I'm misreading you. In which case, substitute the stereotypical HN user for yourself) may have used videogames and computer access as a spring board for your career, I'm willing to wager that you are minority among videogame and computer-saavy youth.* You are a bigger majority, however, on HN, and in the tech world in general, so such reasoning becomes canon without being subject to enough criticism. Plenty of technologists were gamers, but not all gamers become technologists. It's just that the former dominate here.
*I don't have any statistics on hand to support this. But since the videogame industry is as big (and growing) as it is, where are the rising mountains of developers and engineers that supposedly spring from it? Why aren't girls, who spend comparable time with technology, catching the wave as well?
My little brother has been addicted to Minecraft for the past 2 years. I keep waiting for him to "discover" something else as a result of it. To get into programming, or design, or architecture, or something more constructive. Hell, even building things in Minecraft would be more productive than what he does now: go on PvP servers and throw snowballs at people--for 12 hours a day, if my parents let him. He's tried programming lessons a few times, but he usually gives up, because learning a new skill is harder than playing (even difficult) games. He lacks the trait of perseverance. And he's not going to learn it by playing videogames.
>Plenty of technologists were gamers, but not all gamers become technologists. It's just that the former dominate here.
I was a gamer, and didn't become a technologist. I had no idea what a computer program was!
(If that sounds silly, consider all the things you see every day without understanding)
Mostly, my gaming experience was a write-off. It stunted my social development, blocked me from doing more interesting activities, and contributed very little to my well-being.
I may have learned some strategic thinking from games like Starcraft, which I think has carried over to entrepreneurship. But oh, how I wish I could get that time back.
Or, I wish someone had shown me a terminal and what it could do. One glimpse would have been enough.
As a kid I actually didn't really associate "gamers" and "technologists" for some reason. Now I hear people equate them more often, but in the '90s I tended to think of them as distinct groups with only some overlap. Obviously that may reflect only some peculiar social groups at my particular schools.
The kids who had high-level characters on Everquest, attended all the game cons, were in line at midnight for new releases, etc.; were mostly not the same people as the kids who were active in the local BBS scene, played around with installing Linux, were making silly LAMP websites, etc. Not zero overlap, but just in terms of social groups and interests they were clearly identifiable as different clusters of people. Overall the gamers were not as correlated with math/science interest either. At least as I remember it, the "computer nerds" tended to be more often the same people who were also in math club, AP science classes, etc., while gamers were less often represented there.
At any rate, forbidding is not the solution. It only cures the symptoms, not their underlying cause. Better to learn to your kids to enjoy the good things in life responsibly.
And even if your kids play more than you would like, so what? As long as it does not detract from other aspects, it should be fine. Talk with them about it. It seems to me that the best way to make responsible adults is to treat children like responsible adults to begin with (with some caveats, of course).
If any activity starts to become detrimental, there's the time to start acting... Not on a vaguely defined fear that it might lead to something bad. That's trying to exert a level of control on another being's life that simply cannot be achieved, and it often backfires badly later in life, when the activity becomes available without imposed restrictions.
Love the idea. My first thought is that the icon looks like an alarm clock.
Currently, the way I track album releases is by following every conceivable artist on Spotify, which will then notify me. What I like about this is that I can then stream the whole work, for free. However, Spotify doesn't always have works when they're immediately released. Additionally, I have to follow the artist in the first place--there's no library scanning. There's also the chance that I'll have work by an artist in iTunes but won't have ever followed/listened to them on Spotify.
In other words, could you also make a Spotify plugin which scans listening history, and combines this with your iTunes library?
May I kindly ask for Google Music support too, I use it and would love such a service. I was with rdio before, and getting notifications of new releases for artists in my library is what I miss the most.
I've slowly been shifting my music listening from Spotify to Soundcloud.
Music discovery on Soundcloud is much easier, thanks to its news feed. With Spotify, I usually end up digging through "related artists" for artists I already like--which can be effective, but is also time consuming. With Soundcloud, I can follow a few record labels, and discover lots of new music, easily.
Because of this, Soundcloud serves as a great platform for trending music. A song can be posted there and spread solely within the site, without much outside help, thanks both to the liking/reposting of songs and Soundcloud's "trending" section. With Spotify, you either have to already follow the artist or hope one of your Facebook friends is listening.
Which is another advantage of Soundcloud--it's nearly impossible to find other users with the same tastes. In essence, you're limited to Facebook friends.
I find that for me, Spotify is really only good if I already know exactly what I want to listen to. Also, it's ads are incredibly loud compared to the music sometimes. Hopefully Soundcloud doesn't follow that aspect.
I wish you were right. I wish my little brother's Minecraft addiction would lead to something productive. He's talked about learning to program because of it; but of course, he hasn't actually started. That's because he's a child, and lacks the force of will to do anything which is not as immediately satisfying as playing videogames. If he was forced to learn programming, he would probably like it, but he's never going to do it on his own. Because it's hard.
Cartoons are even worse. There is nothing more vegetative than watching TV.
>If you thought contraception brought on a sexual revolution, a world without sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy or social restrictions will for the first time in thousands of years allow us to mate in the way nature intended: without restriction.
If this is how nature intended, why does it require thousands of years of technological progress to get there?
It's completely erroneous to think that nature "intends" anything. That would require intellect (at least a little), and that's only within brains, to the best of our knowledge.
Things happen, in evolution and elsewhere, when random chance and external pressures come together.
I don't mean "nature" as an explanation for action, as in your second line, but as a guide for it. The context in the article uses it in the guiding sense. My point is that the article uses "nature" in a very short-sighted and artificial sense. I do think that discussion of "nature" can be part of a broader teleology for human action, but that's obviously not what the author is attempted.
I recognize the irony. The reason it's ironic is because it's doomed to fail. You cannot raise money in order to lessen the influence of money. If this campaign does anything, it will simply invite opposing groups to raise more money in order to elect anti-campaign finance reform candidates.
What's important isn't a success or failure (in Lessig's "trial" election cycle or in 2016). I think his point is: people care enough about campaign finance reform to help raise $5m in a month.
If candidates knew this was something their constituents cared about, they might actually run on it.
Who cares if Lessig fails. We're finally talking about campaign finance.
I'm not sure which martial art is about turning the force of your opponent's moves against them, but this seems like a prime example. Rest assured, Lessig is acutely aware that what he's doing comes down to a hack. That shouldn't be a tough sell here.
