Okay, I don't want to argue from anecdotal evidence and stereotypes, so I will admit I don't really know it. But gender and sex differences are possibilities which we can't just ignore - Of Gender and Rationality points (4), (5), (6), (7).

Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 25 July 2009 01:52:36PM * 6 points [-]

"Gender differences", where "gender" means the social construct of gender identity, are almost certainly relevant; I don't think anyone would claim that different genders aren't socialized differently starting from a young age. Genetic sex differences have a much higher burden of proof, because there has to be some evolutionary benefit to such differences developing.

That said, it would still be nice if you had direct evidence for your particular assertion ("women prefer practical stuff"), because I've seen this assertion before but don't find it persuasive. It doesn't match my own anecdotal experience, and it sounds a lot like other hypotheses on systematic differences between superficially obvious groups that haven't panned out (cf. this post and related posts on Language Log about gender speech differences).

Comment author: jimrandomh 25 July 2009 04:36:45PM * 2 points [-]

Genetic sex differences have a much higher burden of proof, because there has to be some evolutionary benefit to such differences developing.

This is known to be false. Many differences are purely random.

Comment author: Cyan 25 July 2009 04:58:18PM 2 points [-]

It is known that many differences between related species are due to genetic drift rather than selection. Is it known that differences between males and females within a species are due to genetic drift?

Comment author: jimrandomh 25 July 2009 05:03:42PM 2 points [-]

There is as much genetic drift on the X and Y chromosomes as on any of the other chromosomes, so at least some of the differences between sexes must be caused by it.

Comment author: Cyan 25 July 2009 05:47:50PM * 3 points [-]

The Y chromosome is physically much smaller than all the other chromosomes. In particular, it's not an equal partner to the X chromosome. From Wikipedia, I learned that the human Y chromosome contains 86 genes, which code for only 23 distinct proteins.

continue this thread »

Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 26 July 2009 03:13:36AM 1 point [-]

Random differences still need to be roughly fitness-neutral, else they will be selected against.

Given the stunted nature of the Y chromosome, as Cyan notes, and the fact that all other genetic material is shared, this still means the burden of proof is stacked against the idea of non-obviously essential sexual dimorphism, and strongly so in the case of proposed differences that are large compared to intra-sex individual variation.

Comment author: Z_M_Davis 26 July 2009 04:47:25AM * 2 points [-]

Given the stunted nature of the Y chromosome [...] and the fact that all other genetic material is shared, this still means the burden of proof is stacked against the idea of non-obviously essential sexual dimorphism

I don't think simply counting genes tells us much of anything about the amount of sexual dimorphism in a species, one way or the other. The vast majority of genetic material is shared between sexes in any species, and some species don't even use genes to determine sex. If the fact that most genetic material is shared between sexes really did stack the deck against large sex differences, then we would never see large sex differences anywhere.

Futhermore, I'm not sure what you mean by "non-obviously essential." Obvious to whom? It's not at all obvious to me why (say) it would be adaptive for human males to have so much facial hair compared to human females, and yet human males really do have a lot of facial hair.

Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 26 July 2009 02:04:53PM * 2 points [-]

The discussion here was about behavior, not physical differences. My apologies if I was unclear about that. Furthermore, you seem to be reading "stack the deck against" as referring to likelihood of differences arising, I meant it more in the sense of "here is an observed behavioral difference between human sexes, is it due to 1) statistical noise 2) learned social behaviors 3) intrinsic genetic differences, &c." It seems reasonable to have a fairly low prior for #3 vs. #2.

Also, "obviously essential" in the the sense of "the whole point of sexual dimorphism". Suckling an infant is pretty clearly essential behavior. "Women are more practical", not so much.

continue this thread »

Comment author: thomblake 25 July 2009 10:10:20PM * 0 points [-]

Another data point for contextualism in epistemology!

ETA: (to self) confirmation bias much?

Lightwave comments on The Nature of Offense - Less Wrong

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