Guy stuff

[Ford Prefect]

I'm taking these from Fred Reed's always entertaining column. The entire article can be found here:
http://fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm

What does a cam shaft do?

What is a vertical flyback interval?

What role does expansion play in refrigeration?

What does an address bus do?

Timed delay of arrival is the basis of what common technological service?

What is the role of a CCD in a digital camera?

Name any space craft now in orbit around anything.

What does TCP/IP stand for?

What is the purpose of a torque wrench?

The questions measure, I think, the degree to which people understand the physical world in which they live. Now, I may be wrong (almost inconceivable, I know, it has to happen sometime, like an asteroid strike) but I will bet that anyone scoring perfectly on the foregoing will be male. In fact, anyone coming close will be male. Should this prove true, the conclusion must be that men and women inhabit utterly different head-spaces.

This should not be news to anyone who has been married for any length of time.

I'm also willing to bet that only men will use Wikipedia to look up the ones they don't know.

[Spidey]

Real men don’t use Wikipedia.

[Foil]

Hm, I know about three people who would likely know the answers to most of these. Two of them are women.

[TechPro]

Dang. I know those ansers.

[Testiculese]

Please give those women my number. All the women I know can't tell a TV from a radio.

[Dedman]

Please give those women my number. All the women I know can't tell a TV from a radio.

Seems to me you need to find some smarter women.

[Bet51987]

For what it's worth... YES means I know exactly. NO means otherwise.

What does a cam shaft do? YES
What is a vertical flyback interval? NO CLUE
What role does expansion play in refrigeration? YES
What does an address bus do? Heard of it.
Timed delay of arrival... NO (Reverb?)
What is the role of a CCD in a digital camera? YES
Name any space craft now in orbit... YES
What does TCP/IP stand for? YES
What is the purpose of a torque wrench? YES

Bee

[Ford Prefect]

Bee: Please pee in a cup and submit the A and B sample to a laboratory near you.

Fred's point is not that women do not or cannot understand the concepts, only that most women just don't care to learn much about the physical properties of the world around us. Of course that is a gross generalization and subject to all the usual \"exceptions that prove the rule\".

[Foil]

It's more than a "gross generalization", it's a common misuse of statistics, namely coming to unfounded conclusions.

...I will bet that anyone scoring perfectly on the foregoing will be male. In fact, anyone coming close will be male. Should this prove true, the conclusion must be that men and women inhabit utterly different head-spaces.

Even if his hypothesis was correct, it isn't enough to support his 'conclusion' (which I take as the common idea that "men and women have a genetic difference in brain structure / areas of intelligence").

If his hypothesis was true, he could conclude that there is a difference in knowledge (and I'm sure there is)... but there is nothing to support making the conclusion of why that difference exists. It could be cultural, it could be genetic, it could be a combination of those and/or other factors; there's just not enough to know.

[Ford Prefect]

Would you take his bet Foil?

[Foil]

Would you take his bet Foil?

Of course not.

[Edit: Ah, you mean he bets that the only ones who score perfectly are males, and I bet the opposite (against him)? Then, yes.]

[Ford Prefect]

The term \"take his bet\" to me means accept the wager on his terms. You would be betting against him that the high scorers would be women. (just to clarify that)

If you agree that the majority of the high scorers would be men don't you think that says something about how men and women differ in their view of what it is important to know? Or at least about what stokes their respective curiosity?

[Foil]

The term "take his bet" to me means accept the wager on his terms. You would be betting against him that the high scorers would be women. (just to clarify that)

No, no. Look at his claim. I'd be betting against his hypothesis that all the perfect or close-to-perfect scores will be men. (I.e. If even one single woman scores high enough, that contradicts his claim.) Given that we already had one woman who would score very highly here, I think my odds are pretty good.

If you agree that the majority of the high scorers would be men don't you think that says something about how men and women differ in their view of what it is important to know? Or at least about what stokes their respective curiosity?

If more of the perfect scores are men on Mr. Reed's quiz, then the only thing you can conclude from that quiz alone is that more men have complete knowledge of those subjects.

The rest of the ideas about why this is the case must be based on something outside the results of this quiz, or they're just pure speculation.

[Some people think it's genetic ability, others believe it's gender-cultural forces, some believe it's brain structure, etc. Honestly, I still have never seen anything conclusive either way.]

That quiz only tells us whether there is a difference. However, it does not give us enough to conclude why the difference exists, as Mr. Reed's article claims it does.

[Ford Prefect]

I didn't think Fred concluded anything in a definite way. He just made some observations and some speculations. He tries to be provocative of course as a sort of signature attitude. He is after all writing for entertainment.

Is the difference cultural, or innate? I don’t know, but I’ll bet on innate. It should be easy to find out. Many more women than before are going into such fields as medicine and the sciences. Interesting question: Does a female pediatrician know as much about unrelated technologies as does a male pediatrician? Maybe she does: I don’t know. She will be able to name the peptide pituitary hormones, but will she understand how a phased-array works or know what parasitic capacitance is? Such knowledge might reasonably be expected of a guy who majored in the sciences. Certainly we talked about them in my dorm.

Again, perhaps I err, but it seems to me that women are intensely practical, learning what they need to get the job done, whereas men have a wider range of curiosity. A comparative examination of bookshelves would be informative.

Lots of qualifying statements there it seems to me.

I don't know any more about why the differences exists than he does but I certainly see many examples in my everyday experience that convince me that there is a real difference in the way that women approach the world and the way that men do.
I work surrounded by engineers, the vast majority of whom are men, the same office has a fair number of women who are mostly in administrative roles. Mind you one of our best and brightest engineers is a woman and we also have men in administrative roles. Whatever they do at work is less the point than what they talk about and entertain themselves with.
For example: only men play Counter Strike on the LAN at lunch.

[Dedman]

it's a common misuse of statistics

You mean like saying that 90% of all statistics can be made to say anything 50% of the time?

[woodchip]

Or statistics don't lie and liar's use statistics?

[TIGERassault]

I can't help but notice that nearly all of the questions would be mostly related to engineering. It's a well-known fact that much more males prefer engineering to females.
In any case, there's a cultural difference between how males and females are raised, but it doesn't mean their brains are wired differently.

[CUDA]

but it doesn't mean their brains are wired differently.

Never been Married or have had Daughters have you.

Women and Men do not think in the same way. and I'm not talking about the same things, they so not think in the same fashion as Men do.

[Ford Prefect]

Couldn't agree more Cuda. Been married twice, have a 19 year old daughter and two sons 17,21.
Women are not the same as men. Not less or more, not worse or better. Just not the same.
This guy has a good take on it.
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid= ... C3Aw&hl=en
Women's brains are wired up with emotions.
Men's brains are separated into boxes that don't touch.
Men have the Nothing Box.

[Duper]

I can't help but notice that nearly all of the questions would be mostly related to engineering. It's a well-known fact that much more males prefer engineering to females.
In any case, there's a cultural difference between how males and females are raised, but it doesn't mean their brains are wired differently.

I work with a large number of engineers. Most are men. The few women engineers that I have and do work with are a bit more neurotic than most male engineers. Let me explain.

It's kinda like this: macho looks kinda stupid on a guy (some can pull it off .. like some can wear a pink shirt and get away with it...whatever); but if you put macho on a gal, it is flatly repulsive and disgusting. It's not natural to them. Exibit A ( !! NSFW !! ) << that is not exactly what I mean, but it's gross and kinda humorous.

In the same way, gals that are engineers tend very controlling very VERY single minded - even more so than guys. This is a generalization, of course, but on the whole, accurate.

Being all of 40 something, married, have a daughter and dated a lot in my younger years, I must concur. women are hard wired differently. While the women's lib movement did some good, the feminists that pushed that movement were viscous and pernicious. They loathed anything "family" and still do. Read their manifesto some time. When those women were taken hostage in Iraq and kill when the war started, the feminist movement considered it a "victory" for women. o.0 That's messed up. ..but I digress.

Ford hit the nail on the head. That's a great vid.

[Spidey]

If men and women aren’t wired differently, then why did nature give them different jobs?

[Tunnelcat]

Ah, news flash. Men and women ARE wired differently. DUH! It's been studied quite a lot and it's been found that women have MORE interconnectivity between the two halves of the brain. Also, women have slightly smaller brains, so this interconnectivity might be nature's way of compensating for the brain size differences between the sexes. It also may be an evolutionary trait required for raising offspring.

Now think what happens when the brain can communicate more freely between it's halves. The right brain tends toward emotion and language and the left brain tends toward logic and tasks. In men, they tend to use more of their left logical brain and thus excel at 3D spacial and mathematical tasks. With women, the right emotional brain tends to override the left logical brain because of the interconnectivity, so they tend to excel at language and social skills. On the whole, this is a true generalization for describing the sex variance between thinking modes of the male and female.

BUT, there has been found a considerable wide range in this brain interconnectivity among both men and women, which would explain why some women are better at male stereotypical pursuits and some men are better at female stereotypical pursuits. Layer on top of this, hormone influences on the brain and you can get quite a mix of skills and interests.

[Dedman]

Women and Men do not think in the same way. and I'm not talking about the same things, they so not think in the same fashion as Men do.

As one with both a wife and a daughter, I can back Cuda up on this one.

[Spidey]

I can't help but notice that nearly all of the questions would be mostly related to engineering. It's a well-known fact that much more males prefer engineering to females.
In any case, there's a cultural difference between how males and females are raised, but it doesn't mean their brains are wired differently.

I know this is picayune, but since you love to contradict everyone else I have to do it.

Those are not “engineering” questions, those are technology questions, engineering questions generally need to be worked out using math, skills some such, and those can be answered with simple knowledge.

[Ford Prefect]

Pwned!

[TIGERassault]

stuff

I was referring to "which people understand the physical world in which they live" when I said they're not wired differently, but

Now think what happens when the brain can communicate more freely between it's halves. The right brain tends toward emotion and language and the left brain tends toward logic and tasks. In men, they tend to use more of their left logical brain and thus excel at 3D spacial and mathematical tasks. With women, the right emotional brain tends to override the left logical brain because of the interconnectivity, so they tend to excel at language and social skills. On the whole, this is a true generalization for describing the sex variance between thinking modes of the male and female.

Makes sense.

Those are not “engineering” questions, those are technology questions, engineering questions generally need to be worked out using math, skills some such, and those can be answered with simple knowledge.

I said 'questions related to engineering', not 'engineering questions'. Looking back, it's a mix of both; cam shafts and torque wrenches are certainly not to do with technology.

It's kinda like this: macho looks kinda stupid on a guy (some can pull it off .. like some can wear a pink shirt and get away with it...whatever); but if you put macho on a gal, it is flatly repulsive and disgusting. It's not natural to them. Exibit A ( !! NSFW !! ) << that is not exactly what I mean, but it's gross and kinda humorous.

Yeah... that's definitely a culture thing.