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 6 of 15)
76.
The intuition is NEVER wrong, (gut instinct),while the best reasoning skills have only a 50% percent chance of being right. If men would LISTEN to the women around them, then we could agree at least they are smart. Smarter? No way.
BeeSeer at 11:41PM on Aug 24th 2008
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George W. Bush: "I feel in my heart...," "I believe...," "I have a gut feeling...," " the guidance of my personal savior...," "we know"...
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Intuition is not a good substitute for empiricism and rational analysis, but it continues to be sufficient for believers.
naturalpuppy at 12:53AM on Aug 25th 2008
77. 74. Robert@#38
I say the 3rd book of the Bible is Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.
abbot at 12:03AM on Aug 25th 2008
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Arthur C. Clark 1917 - 2008. Imagination and knowledge personified.
naturalpuppy at 1:06AM on Aug 25th 2008
78. Finally! Someone with the balls to say it like it is. Men ARE smarter. They put us on the moon. Men invented things that have benefited the world in terms of technology. It takes men to build skyscrapers, and to control criminals. Women don't have the physical strength and usually rely on the men to help subdue them. We've seen enough videos where male thugs have beaten the crap out of female officers. But Hollywood must portray women as strong to give them a false sense of superiority and stroke their egos instead of actually EARNING the respect by working hard and studying, instead of relying on fake boobs and a vagina to get ahead in life.
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.
You're welcome.
Ed at 1:14AM on Aug 25th 2008
79. But second, if the person's atheism =is= grounded in some reason or set of reasons, =then his atheism cannot be reduced to a lack of belief=. Why not? Well, now atheism for him is the lack of belief =because= of this specific reason or set of reasons. In short, the atheist who lacks belief for some reason must share the burden of proof with the theist, since atheism in this sense isn't simply the lack of a belief in god, but the position that some particular set of reasons justifies a lack of belief in god. If this is so, then this set of reasons and the conclusion to which it leads must be defended, just as the theist must defend his position.
Eric at 8:38PM on Aug 24th 2008
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Eric - I have a large number of reasons for which I do not believe in your deity, or any deity, or any supernaturalism.
There are also many reasons which preclude my belief in Santa, Mother Goose, Mother Nature, and an infinite number of other possible fantasies.
Am I thus obliged to defend my reasons for an infinite number of disbeliefs, which I consider to be equally valid?
Besides being difficult for me to comprehend, your "logic" seems defective.
naturalpuppy at 1:28AM on Aug 25th 2008
80. "What is so deeply objectionable in the game of chess that women, the crown of creation, are incapable of playing it well?" asked the controversial anti-feminist Dutch Grandmaster and chess journalist Jan Hein Donner many years ago.
He answered his own question in this way: "games are the opposite of human contact . . . During their game, chess players are 'incommunicado'; they are imprisoned. What is going on in their heads is narcissistic self-gratification with a minimum of objective reality, a worldess sniffing and grabbing in a bottomless pit. Women do not like that, and who is to blame them?"
Tom Chviers at 3:26AM on Aug 25th 2008
81. " That's not God's intent Ed. For a clearer understanding, there's a book on it.
fanman at 10:41PM on Aug 24th 2008"---------------------------------God Knows everything. Jesus said that the only way to heaven is through him and the only alternative is hell. God knows that most people don't believe that Jesus is his son. God is planning on burning all the folks who don't profess to be Christains along with a good number of the folks who claim that they are. That sure looks like intent to me.
Ed W. at 4:16AM on Aug 25th 2008
82. Gender differences among chess players? It is not easy to be a top notch chess player. Of course a great example of top notch women chess players is the three Polgar sisters. Of course there are more top level men than women at chess. I suspect this has very little to do with intelligence or natural ability. I cannot profess to know the answers, except that there are many conflicting theories. In my own case (I am a male) I am 72. My chess rating has dropped at least 200 points over the years. Not sure exactly why. Now I am in hard training just to bring it back to my earlier level. In this effort I have subjected my recorded game scores from over my lifetime to computer analysis. It seems that my recent games are tending to be better, which is in contradiction to the decline in rating. So perhaps I am not dumber after all. Perhaps the availability of strong computer chess has changed the level of human players. Computers outdo humans in chess calculation. They generally do not understand structure nearly as well. A thorny subject we are just beginning to understand (curiously all of this is related to Turing's 'halting problem' in mathematics. The interested reader would be advised to research just what that problem is, and how it relates to calculation versus structure. Gender differences in chess? The problem is subtle and we should admit we still don't know very much about this. Perhaps one should try to learn just why the Polgars became so good, before drawing too many statistical conclusions. Ray Bagley, mathematician and computer scientist
Ray Bagley at 4:44AM on Aug 25th 2008
83. Ok, Np. I posted my response at the Lewis board, to which I'll post another link for anyone else interested. Feel free to post it here too, I'd just ask that if anyone responds on this blog that they let me know either on the Lewis board, or by e-mail, as I won't be reading any more comments in this particular thread.
http://cslewis.drzeus.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=25
Jesse at 5:19AM on Aug 25th 2008
84. It would be interesting to find out where women are ranked in scrabble :)
kumar at 7:40AM on Aug 25th 2008
85. dd: 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.
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How this effectively explains why there are more men at the very top levels of chess - when the type of thinking and visualization needed to play chess - as it relates to the genders, has not even been considered, is beyond me. Once again, this shows the shallowness of thought, and the random, biased, subjective approach taken by d'hozah
in his hypotheses and sadly, his conclusions. This is why he can never be a scholar, and why Richard Dawkins' refusal to debate him is analogous to James Joyce refusing to debate me.
America's Most Gangsta at 8:24AM on Aug 25th 2008
86. Hoe many boys have beaten Adventure of Lolo vs how many girls have...GO!
Mokele Mbembe at 8:48AM on Aug 25th 2008
87. Perhaps men aren't necessarily smarter--they're nerdier.
Mokele Mbembe at 8:52AM on Aug 25th 2008
88. "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."
That you've grossly generalized the actions of 3 billion people on this planet is crazy enough, but you also rather obtusely fail to realize the deeper issues involved in what you're claiming.
Women don't dress for themselves. If they did, high heels would never have come into existence. They're a ridiculous inventions that limit mobility and provide unnecessary discomfort. But they exist all the same. So if women don't dress for themselves, then it is logical that they dress for others, and chiefly among those they do dress for are men. While I'm not an advocate for provocative clothing, it is unfortunately a useful tool to gain self-confidence in a young woman who probably had little to start with. If you can't cultivate confidence in your abilities or your mind, you can still have confidence in your body, especially when you can get every guy to turn their head as you walk down the street. It has nothing to do with trying to get men to respect them. It is entirely about feeling some respect for themselves, even if they would be better served by respecting their minds and abilities over their bodies.
But then that begs the question of why these women have so little confidence to begin with. Society tells women to be people-pleasers. Men, to a degree, understand the need to get along for the good of society, but women go out of their way to develop cohesiveness in a group, usually to their own detriment. And when you're told from infancy that other people's feelings are more important than your own, it's easy to see where self-confidence can be hesitant to take root.
Alyssa at 8:57AM on Aug 25th 2008
89. Here's the explanation you overlooked, DD...Women don't want to be surrounded by repressed chess nerds.
Mokele Mbembe at 9:04AM on Aug 25th 2008
90. "It takes men to build skyscrapers, and to control criminals. "
Let's also point out here that men are, by a vast majority, the criminals. Also, as to inventions by females, it's important to note that until very recently, women weren't allowed to hold patents for inventions. If they had an inventions, their husband/father/brother became the holder of the patent. And let's not forget that it is only very recently in our culture that it has been acceptable that women become educated and pursue meaningful careers outside of raising a family. That said, some inventions by female inventors:
Circular saw Tabitha Babbitt 1812
Dishwasher Josephine Cochran 1872
Electric hot water heater Ida Forbes 1917
Elevated railway Mary Walton 1881
Engine muffler El Dorado Jones 1917
Fire escape Anna Connelly 1887
Kevlar Stephanie Kwolek 1966
Life raft Maria Beaseley 1882
Locomotive chimney Mary Walton 1879
Medical syringe Letitia Geer 1899
Rotary engine Margaret Knight 1904
Street-cleaning machine Florence Parpart 1900
Submarine lamp and telescope Sarah Mather 1845
Windshield wiper Mary Anderson 1903
Alyssa at 9:21AM on Aug 25th 2008