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Nov. 5th, 2012 09:27 amYesterday I forgot to post; too busy freezing my arse off in a muddy field.
This is yesterday's post. One for today later.
Yesterday's annoyance was going to be "goddawful weather" which seems to gravitate towards any 10k race I enter... However there was a more annoying thing.
It is my habit to listen to BBC podcasts whilst running (outdoors; at the gym I watch news 24) this is because I get bored very easily. Anyway, a podcast that I was listening to was women's hour and a thing they were talking about was some research about baby girls liking faces more and baby boys like mechanical things more. This research apparently showed that there is some small bias towards this arrangement.
Now, personally I think it's pretty hard to find children who haven't been influenced by social norms; even very tiny children are treated differently by adults by gender.
But lets assume this is true - girls just "naturally" prefer people and boys just "naturally" prefer machines. Well, this research was claiming it's sort of a small bias; not a huge one. So it isn't Girls Are A vs Boys Are B; it's "girls are on average a bit more A and boys are on average a bit more B".
This doesn't tell you anything about YOUR BABY - it can tell you what your baby is "more likely" to enjoy; but you don't need that, your baby is RIGHT THERE you can consult them! OK, when your baby is a few days old they aren't very consultable; but toddlers can be quite vocal about which toy they want! You don't need to say "oh Suzy clearly wants a doll" when Suzy is demanding mechanno every visit to the toy store :-p
This is also true of a lot of things that are supposedly clearly divided into male/female - none of these things are clear cut "Men X, Women notX"; they are overlapping distributions. You can't look at a woman and know that she's worse at X than ALL MEN (or better at notX than all men); whilst the fastest marathon runner in the world is a man, the fastest woman marathon runner at the olympics would have come 60th were she racing in the men's olympic marathon which had 85 finishers - sure she is slower than the fastest man, but she is faster than 25 men who qualified for the olympic marathon, she is faster than *most men* if you wanted to hire a fast runner there is no point in saying that men are faster than women so you'll just look at the men.
Anyway; even where it is true that more men are more X than women (or vice versa) it is almost never true that all men are (all men are men and all women are women; which tautology is probably the only 100% true statement of that form), and there's no point to using these generalisations when deciding who you are going to hire, or pick for your team, or what you're going to buy your 5 year old for Christmas. Much better to find out the X-ness of the individuals who are actually relevant.
This is yesterday's post. One for today later.
Yesterday's annoyance was going to be "goddawful weather" which seems to gravitate towards any 10k race I enter... However there was a more annoying thing.
It is my habit to listen to BBC podcasts whilst running (outdoors; at the gym I watch news 24) this is because I get bored very easily. Anyway, a podcast that I was listening to was women's hour and a thing they were talking about was some research about baby girls liking faces more and baby boys like mechanical things more. This research apparently showed that there is some small bias towards this arrangement.
Now, personally I think it's pretty hard to find children who haven't been influenced by social norms; even very tiny children are treated differently by adults by gender.
But lets assume this is true - girls just "naturally" prefer people and boys just "naturally" prefer machines. Well, this research was claiming it's sort of a small bias; not a huge one. So it isn't Girls Are A vs Boys Are B; it's "girls are on average a bit more A and boys are on average a bit more B".
This doesn't tell you anything about YOUR BABY - it can tell you what your baby is "more likely" to enjoy; but you don't need that, your baby is RIGHT THERE you can consult them! OK, when your baby is a few days old they aren't very consultable; but toddlers can be quite vocal about which toy they want! You don't need to say "oh Suzy clearly wants a doll" when Suzy is demanding mechanno every visit to the toy store :-p
This is also true of a lot of things that are supposedly clearly divided into male/female - none of these things are clear cut "Men X, Women notX"; they are overlapping distributions. You can't look at a woman and know that she's worse at X than ALL MEN (or better at notX than all men); whilst the fastest marathon runner in the world is a man, the fastest woman marathon runner at the olympics would have come 60th were she racing in the men's olympic marathon which had 85 finishers - sure she is slower than the fastest man, but she is faster than 25 men who qualified for the olympic marathon, she is faster than *most men* if you wanted to hire a fast runner there is no point in saying that men are faster than women so you'll just look at the men.
Anyway; even where it is true that more men are more X than women (or vice versa) it is almost never true that all men are (all men are men and all women are women; which tautology is probably the only 100% true statement of that form), and there's no point to using these generalisations when deciding who you are going to hire, or pick for your team, or what you're going to buy your 5 year old for Christmas. Much better to find out the X-ness of the individuals who are actually relevant.