wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (William Lieberman) (07/28/88)
At the suggestion of somebody to post this to comp.edu (it was previously posted to soc.women, misc.legal) I'm posting it here. It is my first time with this newsgroup - the last 12 messages or so all had to do with cheating. Maybe this is a welcome diversion. --Bill Lieberman --- ---From wlieberm Tue Jul 26 11:15:08 PDT 1988 Article 7037 of misc.legal: Path: teknowledge-vaxc!wlieberm >From: wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (William Lieberman) Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal,soc.women Subject: Thinking Faster? Old:Re: Proposed lawsuit Summary: Reply to STANFORD GUILLORY Message-ID: <24049@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> Date: 26 Jul 88 04:03:15 GMT Article-I.D.: teknowle.24049 Posted: Mon Jul 25 21:03:15 1988 References: <22415@amdcad.AMD.COM> <12618@mimsy.UUCP> <23957@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> <4913@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> Reply-To: wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.UUCP (William Lieberman) Distribution: usa Organization: Teknowledge, Inc., Palo Alto CA Lines: 127 Xref: teknowledge-vaxc news.admin:3337 misc.legal:7037 soc.women:18291 In article <4913@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> guillory@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com (guillory stanford s) writes: >>thus making them stronger (or they have the capacity to develop stronger >>muscles than women, by and large), they also have larger nerves, including >>the nerves that actuate muscles, and the nerves that mediate thought. >>A thicker nerve conducts messages faster than a thinner nerve, all else >>being equal. If such is the case, and I believe it is borne out by the >>neurophysiologists, then, inherently, one would expect men to be able >>to not only respond quicker physically, but to possibly THINK FASTER. > ^^^^^^^^^^^^ > I think you have made a gross error here, humans don't think with >the nerves in their fingers, their toes, or whatever. They think with >their brains. What you might mean is that males might have quicker >*reflexes* then females. For example, if a male saw a ball coming >at his face, he might duck out of harm's way quicker, but both sexes >would probably think about getting out of the way about the same time. >I really don't know if men have quicker reflexes or not, but this could >be the only advantage of larger nerves that I see. Maybe, as the rest >of your letter suggests, you were just being facetious. Sorry it took >me this long to get it! > >>What motivates these thoughts is my difficulty in accepting a double standard >>for certain sports but for nothing else. I just feel there should be no double >>standards at all, and that each person should join in any sport desired - >>if a woman will respond by saying she will never become a Babe Ruth that >>way, my answer is, will I? I'm just as human as she is. > > I have no problems at all having women participate in a friendly game >of softball, or a game of tennis. But when I go to a professional sporting >event, I am paying to see the best athletes in the world for the particular >sport. I am not paying $15-$50 dollars to watch just anybody play. I expect >the people on the field, court, etc. to be an order of magnitude better at >the sport than I am. There is no double standard in sports. When a woman >can play the game extremely well, she will be accepted on a professional >team. Witness Nancy Lieberman of the CBA, a quite good point guard. Thank you for referring to my namesake. Unfortunately for me, there probably is no relation. > What about tennis? John McEnroe has said something to the effect >that if he played Martina Navritilova, he would beat her 6-0, 6-0, >forever. Although you might not like his tact, of lack thereof, he is >probably correct. > ... > >Stanford S. Guillory >guillory%vdsvax.tcpip@ge-crd.arpa Stanford, I didn't mean to imply that people (including women) would be included in what you pay to see for anything other than merit. I totally agree with you on that point. You mention that perhaps (and you are willing to be guided by the evidence) men may have quicker muscular reflexes than women - but that surely this doesn't extend to thinking. My reply and my main point is that there is no magical sudden border between "physical" and " mental". That is, if evidence is found supporting the conjecture men have quicker reflexes (that is, their "nerves" from and to their muscles are 'faster'), then it is quite possible that much of the remaining apparatus which makes up the human nervous system is also mechanicallly of the same sort - that is the 'nerves' that presumably mediate thought (i.e. in the brain and spinal cord - called the central nervous system) may also, and likely do, exhibit similar properties of 'quickness'. On a physical scale, thinking is just as mechanical as muscular action. I stress that I'm not saying I know of any evidence to support or refute this conjecture, but only raise the possibility - it may help explain, as do myriads of other factors, why for example, that even though SAT scores since 1960 went way down and have now levelled off or have even risen in the last two or three years, at no time during the period from around 1960 to 1985 did Males' scores (especially in math - not so sure in verbal) ever reach as LOW as females HIGHEST average scores. That is, the scores for worst year for males (average) was still higher than for females' average score for their highest year. (Source: R.B. Zajonc, 'The Decline and Rise of Scholastic Aptitude Scores: A Prediction Derived from the Confluence Model.' American Psychologist, Vol. 41, No. 8 August, 1986, pp 862-867. See especially Figure 3, page 865.) (Basically, I'm conjecturing, that in the tests like the SAT, mathematical reasoning is at least partly based on speed of solving the problems, is it not? This doesn't prove anything, but it doesn't hurt the conjecture that speed of thinking is possibly linked to gender. There is some 'evidence' that the disparity between males and females in this kind of activity increases as a function of physical maturity (the authors (in articles not referenced specifically here) supply arguments in favor of hormonal-based changes in relative cognitive abilities, other things (supposedly) being held constant (See work by Sandra Scarr on mathematically precocious children at John Hopkins University). All this leaves a lot of room for experimental-design problems in my mind, but the possibility must be addressed. What I do understand, though, is that it is easy to get emotionally involved in a belief and it is hard to sit down and ask the questions that should be asked. It is almost like trying to defend a person accused of a heinous crime where there appears to be a lot of evidence against the person. It is hard to say to yourself this person is entitled to a defense. Yet you know that if he is not given a competent defense, any conviction that otherwise would be merited will be overturned, thus hurting your conscience even more. I find, that as a psychologist, I seem to be able to perfectly take either side on issues like these, although deep down there are only two ways to really deal with an issue like this to get any real intellectual satisfaction: 1. As gender is always tied to the PERSON born with it, there is no easy way to randomize (for a controlled study) gender with respect to PERSONS. This is called a subject variable - taught to students of experiemental design, but then quickly ignored, because no one has figured an wasy was around it. That is, environmental-genetic variables are so obviously intertwined from conception, you can never say a factor was entirely due to gender, or to heredity, or to some combination. So, many of these studies of 'precocious' mathematical children cannot really add much to definitively saying that social events in some way did not conspire to 'take' girls, say, out of the running in math. 2. The only way, conceptually, to attack the problem, if anyone is still interested, would be a direct anatomical and biophysical examination of the cell history of development of people. We don't know nearly enough yet to do this. It may some day be possible. Bill Lieberman