If we consider the confound itself - the gender-based training - evidence of the hypothesis, we're stuck in a tricky chicken-and-egg situation.
I am not sure if I understand what exactly is tricky in this situation. I assume that "the hypothesis" is something like "the innate psychological differences between the sexes are the main basis for the gender constructs". There is some trickiness associated with the exact meaning of the hypothesis, but no trickiness with the evidence. Remember that the evidence is not the sole existence of gender-based training, but the fact the training is culturally universal. If the division between the roles of men and women were purely arbitrary or based on physical differences, one would expect more variability between cultures; some cultures would have men in kitchens.
Unless female cooks are more likely to become professionals as the result of early and consistent pressure (as opposed to other motivations) and more likely to do the grocery shopping/cooking at home, etc.
If women don't stare at open fridges because they are using them every day and have thus have learned how to search there efficiently (that was your suggested hypothesis), then male cooks will also not stare at open fridges because they use them every day. Perhaps female cooks are even better, but if the test is done and it is found that male cooks who spend on average 5 hours a day cooking stare at the fridge significantly more than female non-cooks who spend on average 2 hours a day cooking, there goes your theory.
I'm not sure 'feminist household' is equatable to 'egalitarian household,'
Be it egalitarian.
in practice - but even if it were, self-identifying as feminist is not the same thing as somehow overcoming all early gender conditioning.
Therefore I haven't suggested doing the fridge test with self-identified feminists, but with women raised in feminist (or egalitarian, if you wish) households. Or, more directly, simply select women who never cook or prepare food. You will certainly find some.
In general, I don't say the evidence in any of the discussed examples is strong. But I object to your implicit insistence that it is virtually impossible to test hypotheses about inherited psychological differences between the sexes.
Today's post, Rational vs. Scientific Ev-Psych was originally published on 04 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Stop Voting For Nincompoops, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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