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pragmatist comments on Polling Thread - Personality Special - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Gunnar_Zarncke 05 November 2014 10:40PM

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Tags: personality thread poll

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Comment author: Adele_L 06 November 2014 06:42:45AM *  7 points [-]

It's well known that men are better at mental rotation and other forms of spatial reasoning than women. I've always been pretty good at it - my default technique is to carefully check the relations (i.e. count the number of cubes in the segment, note the relative angle of the joint, and make sure they match). It was only recently that I realized that some people actually just rotated it in their head, and 'looked' to see if it was the same.

Anyway, I was wondering if maybe the technique used was correlated with gender.

What sex were you assigned at birth?

With what gender do you primarily identify?

What method do you use to do mental rotations?

(Something else}

Submitting...

Comment author: pragmatist 06 November 2014 02:18:35PM *  13 points [-]

I'm not really sure how to answer this question. I can do pretty well at these simply by visualizing the rotation, and in a casual setting, where not much hinged on getting it right, I would probably just use that method because it's a lot faster and easier. But consciously checking relations does improve my performance (or at least feels more reliable), so if I was in a context where it was important to get the answers right, that's what I would do.

It's like asking whether I add up three-digit numbers in my head or work it out on paper. Depends on the context.

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