If I was tied to bedsprings and tortured with cattleprods I would have to admit that I deeply believe that women are more intelligent than men, orientals more than whites, whites more than blacks… (statistical averages here)
I would argue against that with my children but I would still believe it. It is something I have ingrained somehow.
The point here is: What can I do about it? there is not a clear answer that I can find. too many threads arguing …
Maybe if S. Hawkings sat me down and told me about the perfect test that showed the “truth” then I would buy it. But now I just say the P.C. thing just to be nice, christian…
As to “what can be done about it?”, what are you really getting at? Are you wanting to know what can be done to really test between men and women or do you mean what can be done to make the men-smarter-then-women ratio greater then the women-smarter-then-men ratio?
As to the former, there is no way to really test who is smarter.
As to the latter, well, get ready for either a good debate or a hell of a flaming.
Easy, just don’t judge on the lines of race. You have to realise that you fit into the middle of a scale that does not take note of race, creed, country of origin. You will always find oriental people who are more intelligent than you, for example, and by the same token you will always find oriental people who are less intellignet than you. The same goes for any other demarkation you’d like to apply. Judge in comparison to known standards, like you and your friends, not on broad terms like ‘white people’, and ‘black people’. Try and see what happens. I dunno, that might help.
Well, this is more of an IMHO question but…here goes.
I would say that the beliefs we are raised with as children are very hard to change, but it can be done.
Remember that people are individuals. Consider that socio-economic placement has a great affect on intelligence.
And, for that matter, what is considered “intelligence” and how to measure it is something that is still being debated. In the recent past, most intelligence tests were generally slanted to a Western civilization perspective, typically a white-male American male perspective. This fault has been recognized and taken into account but there is still the debate on what “intelligence” actually is. (All this from my Beginning Psychology from this last year, so forgive me if its pretty basic).
Broaden your horizons. When you find yourself making a judgment, examine why you feel that judgment is true and if there could be extenuating circumstances surrounding the individual that prompted it.
well the point is that whatever your belief is, that is your belief. You can rationalize around it, or try to change your thinking “dont group people by …” but deep inside its very hard to change your beliefs. All these threads arguing one side of the other are just vents, they actually dont change anybody’s beliefs, do they? OR are somepeople swayable and some not? Maybe thats what I am discussing. Can some people change their core beliefs more readily than others? Are all the great debates threads actually changing minds? kind of scary…
justinh, I just don’t understand. Let’s put race aside for a minute. What led you to conclude that women are smarter than men? Was there some incident in your life that influenced you to think this way? Do you have issues with your father or other male figures in your life? In general?
As far as people being able to change their core beliefs, I think people can change them if they want to or if something happens to change their opinion. However, I don’t know if any of the great debates threads are getting people to change their minds. There’s really no way to know that.
Celestina,
well maybe thats my question. I can be convinced of something that I dont have a well formed opinion about. like “are horses smarter than mules”. But something that is imbedded is not so easily changed.
For example, I earlier started a thread about Nazis being the definition of evil in american society. I argued that Nazis were bad but there were numerous other cases in history just as bad or worse (Stalin). I had many try to convince me that Nazis were unique but they didnt convince me. So did they do a poor job, am I correct, or am I just too ingrained with that belief?
(Sadly I wanted to be convinced that they were that bad because my conclusion is that evil behavior is prevelant enough throughout history to be considered a human trait.)
and I dont know why I believe that women are smarter than men. I just do and I have met plenty of dumb women. The dumbest human beings I have ever seen were women, but I excused it as a woman who was dumb, dont know why.
In my school, males dominate the top 50 in class rank. I am not sure how much that speaks for actual intelligence though. It seems like, to me anyway, going through 1-7 or 8th grade, girls were smarter. But, then getting into highschool, and noticing other things, I begin to believe otherwise. Have you ever watched “Win Ben Stein’s Money”? That is NOT an easy game show. The questions are very difficult, and I am very surprised when some of these guys get questions right. Of all the times I have watched that show, I think I have seen two girls make it to the final round, 3 or 4 at most. What does that say about females? Also, how many lead software architects are there out there that are female. Silcon valley is a man’s world (so far anyway) and I am very interested to see how that turns out.
Uh, you do realize that all these examples are just anecdotal evidence, don’t you? Extrapolating these statements into any sort of generalization would be nonsense.
I personally see intelligence as a 50/50 split between nature and nurture–that there is a certain amount of innate intelligence, and that can be cultivated by experience. I also think BunnyGirl is mostly correct, except I would say that socio-economic placement has a great effect on how society views an individual’s perceived intelligence. Just because someone is not knowledgeable in as wide a variety of subjects as another person does not mean that the former is less intelligent, but he/she may be perceived as such in certain contexts. (Like taking IQ tests.) Which one is truly more intelligent: someone who can recite Shakespeare verbatim or someone who can overhaul a transmission without a manual?
Overall, I reject the notion that a particular quality of any one person (much less any group) can be accurately quantified into a number or a series of numbers. The more I think about it, the more I believe that the concept of IQ is at best a fun diversion and at worst an ego-trip for some at the expense of denigrating others (or worse).
There are two types of intelligence to think about. Level attained and level attainable. I think, and the whole principle of the “all men (and women) are created equal” is that level attainable is the same for everyone on this planet, barring some mental problems, physical or chemical. But there are definately differences in level attained on average because different types places and have different attitudes. The Japanese work their students really hard, Americans do not. And if you’re born in a place like Bangladesh, you’re lucky to have a HS diploma, probably really lucky. So if a school is doing poor it is not because the students there are dumb but because the state if failing them. Here in Hawaii our state is doing one of the worst jobs in the nation in educating our students. Which is why we do so bad when it comes to nation wide tests. If the government would put time and effort into providing decent schools, adequate pay for good teachers and a good support staff for those schools we would be doing a hell of a lot better. So that’s probably what you’re noticing Justin, not intelligence but the level of support they received as they were educated.
And gosh if I’m wrong, that changes everything. What would we do if people were not born equal shudder
If you look at a mans brain and a womens while they are doing the same thing different parts light up ( mri scan type thing ), we really are THAT different.
IQ
Identical twins ( even seperated at birth ) have the same or sameish IQ when tested.
BUT - this is important.
IQ isn’t the only thing, some behaviour can probably be altered by environment, i.e. concentration, hard work etc.
As you can not alter someones genes we should try give everyone the BEST environment possible.
Actually, differences in brain function are not necessarily an indication of inherited differences.
Consider the person who goes blind, but develops an extra-sensitive sense of touch. The corresponding “touch” area in his/her brain increases in size dramatically, while the areas used for sight wither to nothing.
The same COULD be true of those apparently inherited traits that supposedly differentiate men and women. There’s no way to tell if their brains developed differently because of the activities they engaged in, because of the ways they were taught to perceive things, or because they were born that way.
Unless there is some evidence that female hormones lead to greater intelligence than male hormones, it is safe to say that any difference in intelligence is a social difference that is trained into our citizens. The races have even less different between them than males and females do so it is even less likely that one race is fundamentally more intelligent than another. Upbringing has the largest effect on intelligence and only tradition causes the trends we see. As a whole, Asian parent do put more pressure to study on their kids. This results in Asian children doing better in school on average than other races. It has nothing to do with being Asian, only being forced by their parents to study. As a whole, men are encouraged to partake in sports and to date more than women are (since many fathers go to great efforts to keep their daughters from dating). This gives women, as a whole, more opportunity to partake in activities that will increase their intellect (such as studying or reading books not related to studying). If the above predictions are true for even a very small percentage of women, the average intelligence of women in America would increase and women would have a higher average intelligence. Fortunately, we are all individuals and the national average has absolutely nothing to do with each individual’s intelligence.