For the past few days I've been blogging on racial differences in the short and long distance Olympic races. I noted Jon Entine's argument that such differences may have a biological origin, a taboo subject because once we start talking about physical differences, perhaps some people might then begin to suspect differences of intelligence between the races.
In my book The End of Racism I argued against such differences, noting instead that culture is a far better explanation of ethnic differences in intellectual achievement and economic performance. But when we turn to the issue of men and women, I note an anomaly.
No one denies that men are taller and stronger than women on average. This explains of course why competitive sports is based on the "separate but equal" principle. Men play against men, and women play against women. Segregation on the basis of gender appears to have an obvious rational basis in physical contests of speed and strength.
Yet one of my favorite games, namely chess, is not such a contest. Rather, chess is entirely based on intellectual capacity. It involves planning, calculation, strategy. One would assume that since men and women are equally intelligent, therefore women should be fully competive with men in chess. But it is not so. Consider: of the top 100 players in the USA currently, only two are women. Even more startling, of the top 100 chess players in the world today, only one is a woman.
So embarrassing is male over-representation at the top level that most chess competitions today are divided into two categories. There is a general category that is almost inevitably won by a man, and then there is a separate women's championship obviously designed to give women a chance to succeed as well. Currently there is a World Chess Champion and a World Women's Champion. Somehow the chess world seem to have adjusted to the reality that int his particular mental contest, women simply aren't as good as men.
Can culture account for the difference between the sexes? Actually no. Culture can help to explain why certain countries like Russia are more dominant in chess. They simply play a lot more chess over there. But culture doesn't explain why Russian males are so much better than Russian females in chess. I am not aware of an historical exclusion of women from chess, and even if there was some past discrimination, how come women still fare so poorly in an age of equality? Of the top 20 junior chess players in the world, there isn't a single woman. So in these respects the cultural explanation falters.
Are we forced to conclude then that men are smarter than women, at least when it comes to chess? Not really. The average IQ of both groups is 100. But when it comes to the bell curve distribution, an interesting difference emerges. The female bell curve is taller and narrower, with the vast majority of women bunched in the middle. The male bell curve is shorter and flatter, with more men at both ends of the distribution. What this means is that there are more male geniuses and more male morons. And this would effectively account for why at the very top level of an intellectual contest like chess, we find far more men than women.
Reader Comments ( Page 14 of 15)
196. memo to Clif & Ted: Mary Jo Copechnie still unavailable for comment. In cute, cuddly Teddy's last line he said "Hope will rise again!". Sadly, Mary Jo won't!
fanman at 10:04AM on Aug 26th 2008
197. I really fail to see the point of arguments like this one. I have seen it rehashed time and again---Men are more intelligent than women, Asians are more intelligent than Caucasians, Caucasians are more intelligent than Africans, etc, etc, ad infinitum. These arguments presume that intelligence actually MATTERS.
Baloney. In my 40+ years in the actual working world, I have learned that intelligence matters next to nothing. You want to know what leads to financial success? Being related to the boss, whether through blood or marriage. Liars prosper. Cheaters prosper. Brown-nosers prosper. As Joseph Cotton's character said in "Citizen Kane"--'There's no trick to making a lot of money...if all you want to do is make a lot of money.'
Success (and by this I mean financial success)in these United States doesn't come to the intelligent--it comes to the man (or woman) who is willing to stomp everyone else into the dust in order to achieve it. This doesn't require a high IQ. It simply requires that one be greedy, treacherous, and uncaring enough about his/her fellow humans to do whatever it takes to claw to the top of the dung heap, and stay there once arrived.
Look at the level of cheating taking place in high schools and colleges. Look at the backstabbing in the workplace. These people, sadly, have learned that what actually works in the REAL world is not intelligence or courage or honor...what pays off is how well you can deliver a back-handed compliment or lie with a straight face or suck-up to the boss.
Kodiak at 10:18AM on Aug 26th 2008
198. You know, fanman, I get really tired of idiots rehashing Chappaquiddick. Yes, everyone knows the story--he got drunk, he drove off a bridge, and a young girl died. End of story. Yes, it sucked and yes, it was reprehensible. But you need to get in the way-back machine, my friend. The reason he didn't go to prison wasn't so much that he was a Kennedy, but that back then being drunk, or on pills, or tired, or whatever excuse you might have had to not being 100% yourself was actually used as a DEFENSE. When I lived in Chattanooga, I lived on the same street as a man who had gotten drunk at a KKK meeting in 1963 and was so pissed off that he intentionally drove his car off the road and killed two young black children. His punishment? Because "his judgment had been impaired" he was sentenced to the permanent loss of his driver's license. That was it. Murder two children, lose your license. Police there still remember it. That's how life was in 1963. People were not held accountable for "impaired judgment". Thank goodness that mindset has changed. But you can't go back in time and apply 2008's mindset to the early 1960's. It was a very different world back then.
Kodiak at 10:38AM on Aug 26th 2008
199. 94. Post 182 - Of courses Clif makes his living as a left wing suckoff....
xxx
if you want item by item why I'm a democrat in the same left wing sense as Eisenhower or Kennedy or even Nixon, I can give it to you.
You have only superstition and rumor to frame your political opinion from. There is no rush limbaugh pus trough for democrats to drink from. You have cornered the market on governing by the Big Lie.
The truth is that monopolizing industries and allowing corporate heads to collude restrains trade and forces citizens and the country to serve the economy.
Republicans want to continue this and it's wrecked our budget, our security, our health, our education and our longevity.
Democrats do NOT want to continue this, and THEY have the HISTORY of fiscal responsibility.
Republicans raise taxes and give the proceeds to the wealthy and borrow even more. Reagan did it, Bush did it.
Every republican government since reagan has lived on money borrowed from our ideological enemies - muslims, arabs and communists.
I remember an america as recent as jimmy carter where a SINGLE lower middle class income would buy you a new house, a new car and send your 2.3 kids to college while mom stayed home and managed the household.
This single income and your pension would allow you to retire at 65 and you looked forward to a career at a single company.
Then came Reagan. Try it now.
And that's why I'm against libertarianism, neoconservatism, neoliberalism, supply side economics, corporatization, royalism, oligarchism fascism, robber baronism, neocalvinism, christian reconstructionalism, dominionism, or ANY scam where the poor have to support the rich.
We were NOT founded on those principles and if you don't vote for Obama you will have them in your face for another four years down the same slippery slope.
We know what's at the bottom since WWII was all about that as was the cold war as was the revolutionary war. All were liberalism, or Americanism, the US v. conservatism, royalism, naziism, all the despotic enemies of constitutional government.
Democrats believe in upholding the constitution and settled law. They believe in constitutional BALANCE OF POWER.
That is conservative, and the democratic party holds those values.
Republicans want to destroy the central government and are on record endlessly saying so, and they wish to continue to let foreign corporations encroach on the duties of American government with no consideration for the security of the nation, the safety or well being of her citizens or centuries old Public Policy.
These items the republicans want to destroy are the very things that define us as Americans. It says so in the constitution and its preamble. Republicans oppose this in the 21st century.
That is treasonous, and the perpetrators are republicans.
It doesn't take much brain to figure this out, but your political stance exists only to lend validation to your deeply entrenched character flaws.
You are a bigot and use jesus to validate it, you hate blacks and pretend you're more american when you're actually inferior in virtually every way to the democratic presidential nominee, and you will sell your childrens' health, education, freedom and pursuit of happiness for the previously itemized mess of republican pottage.
I saw your kind in jim crow days and I see them now.
The language is cleaned up but your act has not.
If you want black and white terms, it cuts both ways. If Obama is a muslim and all the other trash you try to foist off, then you and mccain are nazis.
One thing you are is an unthinking dupe. You want grade school simplicity to the complications of life.
People like Jim Jones, Jerry Falwell, Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, David Dukes, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Wiener, Ann Coulter and thousands of others make their living telling you you're smart.
I think your guidance counselors and teachers in high school gave you the accurate assessment, and it was free.
You give up your soul and your children's future for whatever heroin you're getting from this new fascism that numbs your ability to make decisions that won't destroy you. You can't quit any time you want to, either.
There are probably two possibilities. The moral high road is to evaluate your decisions relative to something else besides a right wing propaganda feed, and the moral low road is the one you're on now.
If this is a matter of ignorance or even affective problems, you have a chance at correcting your course away from the falls, but if it's stupidity, that is unfortunately forever.
Do you have any original thoughts or do you have to load up on anti american right wing corporatist propaganda first?
This is as frank an assessment as I can make of you. If you don't like it and you're not stupid maybe you can change, but you're out of step with the god you claim to worship, as Botts and probably others have tried to tell you.
Clif Kuplen at 12:24PM on Aug 26th 2008
200. And if the women have Michele O as one of thier best examples of smart women, y'all are in trouble.
Man_in_Wilderness at 9:02AM on Aug 26th 2008
xx
how would you know? You have the brains and education of a brick. Michelle Obama has about twice your intelligence at a conservative estimate.
Clif Kuplen at 12:32PM on Aug 26th 2008
201. 196. memo to Clif & Ted: Mary Jo Copechnie still unavailable for comment. In cute, cuddly Teddy's last line he said "Hope will rise again!". Sadly, Mary Jo won't!
fanman at 10:04AM on Aug 26th 2008
xxx
back around that same time, John mccain was trading American flyer's bombing package routes for hospitalization.
The result, according to Special Forces Intelligence officer Earl Hopper was that vietnamese anti aircraft knew the routes in country, the targets, the peeloff points, the altitude the planes were flying, and as a result, the vietnamese anti aircraft kill rate went up 60% until intelligence realized mccain was collaborating with the enemy.
Unfortunately these brave soldiers whose lives were ended so Mccain could receive his hospitalization will not be rising up either.
By the way, teddy kennedy isn't running for anything and will probably die before the end of the year.
The 'songbird' as his fellow captives named him is running for president.
Clif Kuplen at 12:39PM on Aug 26th 2008
202. Clif, is that really legit? I mean, coming from you I don't doubt it, but I didn't ever know that his "singing" cost lives like that! Why is this not common knowledge? Why is it so effectively buried?
Saint Brian the Godless at 12:48PM on Aug 26th 2008
203. 202. Clif, is that really legit? I mean, coming from you I don't doubt it, but I didn't ever know that his "singing" cost lives like that! Why is this not common knowledge? Why is it so effectively buried?
Saint Brian the Godless at 12:48PM on Aug 26th 2008
Yes, it appears to be legit to me. Here's a website where you can see Hopper's video testimony:
http://vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/cin_declassified_landing.htm
Mccain has covered his ass in the press for decades and has gotten a free ride on a bunch of really abominable crap. Meanwhile, he's pissed off a lot of Vietnam vets and they're trying to get heard before it's too late.
If he wants to continue to campaign on noun, verb, POW, it's time to put POW under the microscope, including his psychiatric records and his history of collaboration; the confessions and the propaganda videos, and the steady stream of challenges to his vietnam stories, like the two versions of the football story and others saying he was told the cross in the dirt story, or the revelation that he had no option of returning early. It's all up for grabs as far as I'm concerned. I sure as hell don't know him! He's flopped on every position I recall respecting him for holding.
Ditto with the Keating five, the connections to la cosa nostra figures and some of the less publicized business and land deals I'm reading about now and don't want to comment on yet.
Apparently before he was stump broke, he was a little more 'maverick' than people are generally aware. He comes off as a spoiled child of privilege with a lot of ambition and little ability - below average pilot and charlie sheen lifestyle.
Hey, here's something I heard from Rachael Maddow on the convention broadcast.
The star of his 'debra' ad was LIED TO! She thought the mcsame SUPPORTED Roe v. Wade, and she did the commercial relying on that information as being true.
That's a promissory estoppel and may be legally actionable if she could demonstrate injury, and humiliation is definitely injury. Depends on how pissed off she is about being lied to and exploited.
Clif Kuplen at 1:07PM on Aug 26th 2008
204. I just watched the Maddow clip, and you're right. She claims that she didn't even know that McCain was in favor of overturning Roe v Wade.
What a tool! How *stupid* are these "pumas?"
On a side note, never mix up a PUMA with a Cougar... They're nothing alike. With one you get laid, and with the other you get laid out in lavender.
Saint Brian the Godless at 1:36PM on Aug 26th 2008
205. The consensus on why males of all ages dominate females in chess is that they are superior on two key fronts: 1) the skills reqired in chess such as spatial recognition/manipulation, calculation and memory, and 2) aggression. I don't know about the genetic determination of the above skill set, but aggression as driven by testoterone is one of the fundamental traits separating the sexes that can be stated with certainty. Females just don't have the aggression necessary, therfore the motivation, to spend 5 hours of mental anguish to get a satisfying, elegant win. What's the point?
There is another stark trend in the chess field that started about 15 years ago: the rise of Asians, namely Chinese and Indians, in the game. Below is a table summarized from the August rating list of the US Chess Federation. Of the top 10 players for each age group, here's the beakdown:
Age Male Female Asians
7 9 1 7
8 10 0 7
9 9 1 5
10 10 0 4
11 10 0 8
12 10 0 3
13 10 0 7
14 9 1 5
15 10 0 5
16 10 0 2
17 9 1 4
18 10 0 5
Children with Russian names also occupy on average 1-3 places in the top 10 lists. Which means these 3 minority groups (~6% of US population) make up anywhere from 50% to 80% of the top echelons of this game and comprise the future of US chess. The top 20 lists look the same. From personal knowledge, there are no African Americans or Hispanics here. This is another clear case of cultural determinism meeting talent.
Tannhauser at 2:37PM on Aug 26th 2008
206. pparently before he was stump broke, he was a little more 'maverick' than people are generally aware. He comes off as a spoiled child of privilege with a lot of ambition and little ability - below average pilot and charlie sheen lifestyle.
xxx
jeez, I didn't realize it when i was writing it, but that's George Bush II! They're a lot more alike than I had thought.
Clif Kuplen at 3:59PM on Aug 26th 2008
207. Tannhauser; "Children with Russian names also occupy on average 1-3 places in the top 10"
Long winters?
a born atheist at 5:06PM on Aug 26th 2008
208. Hey Clif posts 199 – 201 - drink some more kool-aid, Jimmy Jones is still looking for few more followers. Michele was quoting left wing socialist propaganda, like I quote scripture.
Michele has the intelligence of one that parrots what they hear. Y’all rank on the intelligence somewhere around a rock at the bottom of the sea.
JM is a patriot of a caliber you can only dream of. Individual security intelligence is only good for 72 hours. After that other security kicks in to make in null and void. I will concede that those security issues may have came into play after our JFK and LBJ Vietnam war.
You are an anti-American, as are the other socialist friends of yours. Democrats use to stand for something, now they just fall for anything. Railroaded by you left wing nut jobs. You want change but only to re-distribute the wealth because you are to lazy to earn it for yourself. That is not an American way, that is a socialist way. You are a sloth looking for a handout. Absolutely good for nothing.
I do agree our representatives, congressmen, senators, and presidents should be put under the microscope. The greedy and corrupt ones should be put in jail for a very long time. Start with Obama, Clinton, Kennedy, Biden, etc…etc…
Ok, I am tired, I do not have a party favorite, and a list of the good ones would be shorter. I would just tar and feather all of them and run them out of government and start over, so I’ll quit for now.
Man_in_Wilderness at 8:27PM on Aug 26th 2008
209. ed"Women, dressing like a slut does not entitle you to respect. When you dress, act, and carry yourself with respect, then men will respect you. Learn to have some class. Remove the tramp stamps, cover the crack of your butt, and wear a modest blouse instead of trying to show us your hooters. Once you seen a pair you've seen them all."
This man speaks the truth!
If you women want respect from a man start acting like ladies again. You are not being "empowered" by dressing like a $2 hooker, you are setting yourselves up to being assesed by nothing more than your material qualities.
Once your material qualities fade you will then render yourselves worthless to the very thing you were trying to appeal to in the first place.
Then again materialist fundamentalists have difficulty seeing past such things. Which is why that cammel will be squeezing through the eye of a needle long before they will be returning to Christ.
allabaster at 8:39PM on Aug 26th 2008
210. Michele has the intelligence of one that parrots what they hear. Y’all rank on the intelligence somewhere around a rock at the bottom of the sea.
xxxxx
you consider yourself a superior intellect to Michele Obama? Do you think you can fly too?
Got your bar association number handy, or a history of your litigated cases? Anybody ask you to speak at a national convention? Do you have anything except the notion that because you're white you're more special than 'negroes'?
You lack the scientific understanding and general knowledge of an average fifth grader. The fact is you are genetically inferior to Barack Obama and his wife and plainly so. You want special consideration because you're white and have brainwashed yourself into thinking you get points just for that.
Kool aid? How many thousands or hundreds of thousands of times have I read the same dimwitticism? You can't even conjure up an insult without clearing it from some right wing pus trough.
When it comes to intelligence, einstein, you're in a gunfight with nail clippers. A paper cut smarts more than you can.
Stupid is forever. Here's yer sign.
Clif Kuplen at 8:39PM on Aug 26th 2008