Comment on Open Thread, January 2011

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 19:57:30 GMT

There are enough examples of people making broad general claims about how men and women think and behave that aren't particularly supported by data that such a post is, I expect, something of an uphill climb.

Put another way: that any given post on the subject is just another attempt to support pre-existing social preconceptions with pragmatic-sounding but ultimately ungrounded assertions is a pretty high prior probability for some readers (myself included), so overcoming that prior with evidence is important.

That said, IMHO a post that is demonstrably grounded in actual data, genuinely relevant to questions of how people think and behave, and at least somewhat novel ought to garner more approval than disapproval.

Discuss