Competition, testosterone, IQ and equality

Electra_Cute · 2017-05-12T04:15:10+00:00

Men and women are not equally capable at everything.

ArthurMacArthur · 2017-05-12T12:38:35+00:00

I am a woman who teaches postgraduate courses for mid-grade military officers via one of the service colleges. I assure you that I am quite capable in my areas of expertise, yet I had no compunction about originally being offered this position due in part to the fact that I am a woman, for the following reasons:

I am highly competent, and that is reflected in my work. The affirmative action thing is not and was never intended to elevate the incompetent.
What AA is and was intended to do is provide an intangible benefit along the lines of those conferred by informal networks. I got hired partly because I am a woman. I work with at least ten guys who were hired at least partly because they were someone's roommate at one of the service academies. All of us are qualified; we just got a leg up in different ways. I had another advantage in that I was recommended for the position by my grad school advisor, one of the most able and noted military historians in the world. The service academy guys did not come with that advantage.

So yes, there are reasons that go beyond competitive drive and ability for the government to provide a bit of a leg up to certain individuals.

grindlegrundle · 2017-05-12T08:13:53+00:00

Not even touching on the other stuff, IQ distributions are changing all the time. It's (maybe) true that there's more variation in males' scores in some areas, but it's not such a crazy difference that there would be absolutely no women in intellectually rigorous fields without government intervention. It also varies region to region. IQ is surprisingly susceptible to social influence. The gap between the average male IQ and the average female IQ has closed or even reversed on the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test in recent times (though the slight female advantage probably comes down to temperament). As more and more women take on intellectually demanding jobs and get educations, the average female IQ increases.

Competitive drive surely also plays a role, as does the fact that women have to give birth, but in your perfectly gender equal world, I don't think we would suddenly revert back to 1950s gender roles without intervention. Rather, I think we'd see a somewhat greater proportion of men in science and engineering (better spatial rotation abilities), and more women in law and politics (better verbal skills and working memory), while many women would still choose to forgo a high powered career in favor of raising a family.

Commenting2 · 2017-05-12T12:02:00+00:00

Unless competitive drive and testosterone also make men perform better in prestigious roles an argument could be made that affirmative action is necessary to get high performing women into jobs that would otherwise be occupied by ruthless but low-performing men.

If the mainstream consensus on sex difs in IQ is correct (same average, variance ratio between 1.10 and 1.20) should only matter for extremely high achievers. Don't know any professions with an average IQ high enough that sex would make a big difference. As of right now the few women among fortune 500 CEOs are on average somewhat better educated than the men and presumably have higher average IQ. So judging by IQ AA at least hasn't pushed completely incompetent people into managerial roles

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5th_Law_of_Robotics · 2017-05-12T12:48:13+00:00

Even in the complete removal of gender roles with no systemic biases (like against men in education and health and social services or against women in something I'm sure) there will be differences in outcome. We should just get around to accepting that men and women are different and that's ok.

despisedlove2 · 2017-05-12T15:06:41+00:00

Do you think men will grow up with high T and high IQ after being "treated" for ADHD by a feminist school counselor who thinks that normal boyish behavior and learning methods are aberrant in some way?

questioningwoman · 2017-05-12T04:35:01+00:00

There will still be people who are quadriplegics or people with 50 IQs or people who need assistance in some way or another. There will also be old people that need to be taken care of from social security and people who fell on hard times.

My biggest motivation in life is to piss anyone off who doesn't consider my feelings and also to dedicate it to proving the world wrong.

Title	Competition, testosterone, IQ and equality
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	3
Comments	83
Date	May 12, 2017 3:40 AM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/6ap1br/competition_testosterone_iq_and_equality/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/competition-testosterone-iq-and-equality.268167 https://theredarchive.com/post/268167

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