quote:
Originally posted by The_Hiro:
DustMan: While I seldom agree with Chrissy's 'nurture' stance, I think she's got her heart in the right place and she does raise a lot of good points. I am more of a 'nature' type guy myself, but I try to maintain skepticism about scientific findings. I think that there's good reason to. Ever heard of phrenology? As well, I don't know where you came up with the argument that the male brain is more 'efficient' then the female brain. Just because you've thrown some numbers around doesn't prove jack shit. All you've created is a false sense of precision - a dumb fallacy that every student of science should know to avoid.
It's not clear to me whether you're genuinely sexist and are intentionally using 'scientific' findings to mislead, or if you truly believe the malarky that you're expounding. Regardless, I think that you need to read up on philosophy of science before you start throwing scientific arguments around. You're giving science a bad name (and I hate that). I suggest you start with Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions". Read that book and you'll realize that there are limitations to science. Follow that one up with a book by Trevor Pinch, "The Golem: What You Should Know About Science".
I did not argue that as a whole the average male brain is more efficient than the average female brain. There are differences in structure, but AFAIK the average intelligence for both is 100. This is how efficiency in the context you're talking about should be measured.
Nurture may do a fair amount to the formation of a brain, but these generally "go along" to some extent with genetic differences. There are differences in structure between male and female brains. It is inevitible that there will therefore be some advantages of one "design" over the other and vice versa.
There was an argument that there have been less famous female scientists than male due to the sexism in the scientific fraternity. I cannot deny this has happened, but the fact that male brain tissue is more made up by volume of grey matter, each new bit of brain communicates with the other bits of brain better and therefore any thought process taking place in that part of brain is better linked to the other parts of the brain, and therefore adds more per cubic centimeter.
It is more efficient volumetrically but not on average real-world situations. The people that develop world changing scientific theories arn't average people, however. Male brains have a higher standard deviation of intelligence, so more males will be found in this area naturally (although not quite so polarised as the past due to decreasing sexism in the scientific fraternity).
I read most of my information about brain structures from a scientific magazine, "Focus", article on the make-up of brain. Most of this logic is not my own.
I just plain don't like the suggestion that somehow my way of thinking gives science a bad name.
