Post: #1

Hey guys. I've recently had the pleasure of reading the following book that I think many of you on the forum will find fascinating: The Essential Difference: Male and Female Brains and the Truth about Autism.

I would like to discuss the book (at length), minus the Autism part, as well as the evidence that the author presents to support his thesis. I tried my best to summarize the main arguments as succinctly as possible, so at times they may appear to be oversimplified. I have NOT included all of the arguments made by the author, as that would be beyond the scope of this post.

To sum it up and give you the tl;dr version of it, the author basically asserts that women are better "empathizers" (his terminology) and men are better "systemizers" (also his). By this, he means that the female brain is equipped for language and reading emotions. The male brain is better suited for creating and understanding "systems", be they computers, networks, infrastructure etc. So, obviously this is not groundbreaking territory for the average red-pill dude. As expected, the author caught some flak for being sexist, misogynistic etc. Female reviewers on Amazon flipped the fuck out, as evidence by some of the reviews there (http://www.amazon.com/The-Essential-Diff...difference)

Anyway, let's take a look......

AUTHOR

Simon Baron-Cohen (Borat's real-life cousin)
Nationality: British
Occupation: Professor of psychology and psychiatry at Cambridge University, researcher on Autism
Possible Biases: not impartial to autistic people, views expressed might be PC-friendly due to living/working in the West.

THESIS


Baron-Cohen's main argument in the book is the following:

Quote:The female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems

SUPPORTING EVIDENCE PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR



So as I stated above, Baron-Cohen believes that the female brain is suited for "empathy". He defines empathy as "the drive to identify another person's emotions and thoughts.... and it is done in order to understand another person, to predict their behavior, and to connect or resonate with them emotionally." Females, according to Cohen, are able to empathize to a much greater degree than males. Ok. Proof? Cohen states the girls outscore males on the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity, which is a test that measures sensitivity to non-verbal cues of emotion.

Furthermore, Cohen asserts that women outscore men on "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test, a test that he and his colleagues developed in order to gauge a person's understanding of facial cues/expressions. Here's a link to the test itself for those of you that are interested:
http://www.questionwritertracker.com/qui...K3TKB.html

Now, regarding men, Cohen maintains that the male brain excels at what he calls "systemizing". He defines systemizing as "the drive to understand a system and to build one". The system can range from something as simple as a bookshelf to something extremely complex, such as a particle accelerator. Crudely put, men, on average, are better at math, physics, science, engineering etc.

Where's the evidence? Cohen states that certain professional fields are almost entirely male-dominated. Math and physics departments at major universities are nearly exclusively male. Out of the 170 living Nobel Prize winners in science, only 3 are female. Cohen starts to get a little white-knighty and backtracks at this point in the text and drops the following:

Quote:Although there is no evidence that physics and engineering are less friendly to women applicants than biology, it could be that some pernicious, unconscious sexism operated at the point of selection

I gather he felt the need to cover his ass a little given the subject. Understandable. To his credit, he adds that:

Quote:Corroborating evidence can be found in the ratio of ten males to every female who perform at the top end of the SAT-M, the Scholastic Aptitude Math test that is administered nationally to college applicants in the USA

In the field of mathematics, especially at the highest levels, males tend to dominate. For instance, at the International Mathematical Olympiad, a worldwide event where the best mathematicians compete, virtually all the participants are male. Similarly, men dominate the field of weapon-making, which involves high "systemizing" abilities.

Cohen also goes on to cover aspects of Autism and Asperger's Syndrome, basically asserting that they are extreme versions of the male brain. I won't cover that part of the book here because that is an entirely different topic and would merit it's own thread.

The following charts illustrate the crux of Cohen's argument. You can see that females outscore males on the empathy scale, while males dominate the systemizing scale, with autists being the extreme "systemizers".



Furthermore, males outperform females on the Adult Embedded Figures test (illustrated here). Cohen states that males are quicker and more accurate in locating the target from the larger, complex pattern.



NATURE VS. NURTURE: WHERE DOES COHEN STAND?


Does Cohen believe in the "gender stereotypes" bullshit or is he more of a "it's in the genes" type of guy? I will let his own words speak for themselves. I've done my best to keep them IN CONTEXT and provide what I think is a reasonable overview of the author's views.

Quote:How can we test if it is our gender-role beliefs that cause the observed sex differences (in behavior, emotion, interests, and skills) or if they arise for Darwinian reasons? The Darwinian David Geary argues that more males are agentive because males depend for their reproductive success on a drive to establish social dominance. For the gender-roles theory to work, it would have to disprove such Darwinian factors. This has not yet been done. In fact, the gender-roles theory runs into specific problems quite quickly. For example, it fails to explain striking similarities across very different societies. Thus, of 122 societies studied, weapon-making (a clear example of a systemizing skill) is an exclusively male activity in 121 of these. (In the one society where women work in weapon-making, the women help the men rather than being involved exclusively.) This must be more than a coincidence.

Quote:But some of the sex differences are present so early (at birth) that it is hard to see how culture could be the sole cause. In addition, some parents try to do everything to avoid such cultural influences on their child. They buy their sons dolls, and their daughters toy trucks, only to find that the child still chooses to play with sex-typical toys. And even if we think that this simply shows that peer and media influences are stronger than parental ones, this still seems insufficient to explain all the observed sex differences, because of their early on-set-before the media or the peer group have taken root in the young child's mind.
For these and other reasons, it seems possible that the development of sex differences in behavior are due to factors other than, and additional to, the cultural ones. Biological factors arc the only other candidates

Quote:Men's brains are larger and heavier than women's brains. When the ratio of brain to body size is taken into account by comparing men and women of the same height, men's brains are still heavier. Post-mortem examination shows that men's brains contain about 4 billion more neurons in the cortex than women's. So men's heavier brains may be due to having more brain cells. Having more brain cells may lead to greater attention to detail, which itself would lead to better systemizing. The cost of such increased attention to detail could be a slower grasp of the overall picture. This remains to be fully tested

Cohen backtracks slightly to please the PC crowd with the following:

Quote:With the human genome mapped, and the determination of the functions of genes now a major industry, we can be confident that genes controlling empathizing and systemizing will be identified. Such genes will not rule out the role of culture and environment. Genetically and/or hormonally based neural systems underlying empathizing and systemizing still require the right environmental input (sensitive parenting, for example, in the case of empathizing) in order to develop normally

BOOK RATING AND REVIEW



Overall, I thought the book was stellar. To have such a non-conventional point of view be published is a miracle in and of itself. Cohen keeps the book short and sweet; it clocks in at just under 200 pages. Could he have been even more forceful with his argument? Absolutely. But given the fact that he wanted to reach a big audience, you can sympathize with his need to make some PC-friendly remarks.

As I mentioned in the beginning of the post, there is nothing groundbreaking in this book for the average reader on RVF. Many of us know that men, on average, outperform women on cognitive tasks, math, science etc. Still, it is highly encouraging to see these assertions being backed up by science.

Highly recommended.

Post: #2

This is all good and right, but why do science needs to waste time and energy to conclude the obvious? How about scientists work on that cancer cure or Mars colonization instead?

Post: #3

Great review, I've had this book on my to-read list for awhile. I'll be sure to get to it.

Post: #4

Interesting women are hard wired for empathy but that girl just sucked 12 dicks and probably broke that beta boy's spirit forever, even though he tries to act like it is all good.

You sure empathy for others or just for themselves?

Nice report, just messing with the findings.

Post: #5

(08-15-2014 11:45 PM)samsamsam Wrote:  Interesting women are hard wired for empathy but that girl just sucked 12 dicks and probably broke that beta boy's spirit forever, even though he tries to act like it is all good.

You sure empathy for others or just for themselves?

Nice report, just messing with the findings.

Dicks don't suck themselves; she was just empathizing with the struggle of the average penis.


This is an absolutely fantastic review by the way. Thanks for taking the time to write up a synopsis.

Post: #6

(08-15-2014 11:45 PM)samsamsam Wrote:  Interesting women are hard wired for empathy but that girl just sucked 12 dicks and probably broke that beta boy's spirit forever, even though he tries to act like it is all good.

You sure empathy for others or just for themselves?

Nice report, just messing with the findings.

Empathy as defined by the author is the capability to understand others emotions, not actually caring. That's what makes betrayal by women difficult for men to handle. Women understand exactly how much pain they're causing and they just don't care.

Post: #7

Awesome review, thanks!

I just picked up "The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind" By Michio Kaku. I'm only a few chapters in so far. Have you ever read it and would you consider it worthwhile?