http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/articles/empathising_systemising.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml

ALL tests embody and validate the bias of the tester and what are tests used for? Very simply put there’s no bias free person.

adrian

Aaron - I can understand why you are tiring of the topic - too bad your fatigue didn’t set in before you started spouting vacuous nonsense that you couldn’t back up.

1. There are undeniable anatomical, physiological, behavioral differences between human males and females.

2. Whether the differences are innate or acquired is not known.

3. The relevance of these differences to the success of women in physics is even less known.

4. Some of Evolutionary Psychology is so pseudo-scientific that even biologists like Prof. PZ Myers (pharyngula.org) have a problem with it. From my POV, he can have the last word:

John Quiggin is picking on those poor evolutionary psychologists, as represented by Kristof’s laughable opinion piece on the “God Gene”. Quiggin hits on the usual deficits of EP: the evidence-free just-so stories, the unrealistic time-scales, the reduction of the complex to the simple, the superficial and endlessly flexible definitions of the phenomena they are addressing, etc. I agree completely with him, these are flaws in the evolutionary psychology research program. I have another gripe to add to the list, my main reason I reject evolutionary psychology and that whole line of tripe about genes “for” various things.

It’s nothing but modern molecular preformationism. Palmistry for the genome. We’ve been fighting against this simplistic notion of the whole of the organism prefigured in a plan or in toto in the embryo since Socrates, and it keeps coming back. We’ve moved from imagining a little homunculus lurking in the sperm to one hiding in the genome. It’s just not there. You can’t point to a spot on a chromosome and say, “there’s the little guy’s finger!”, nor can you point to a spot and say, “there’s his fondness for football!”.

1. There are undeniable behavioral differences between males and females.

2. Some of these behavioral differences arise from genetic factors, not cultural ones.

3. Evolutionary psychology operates using a logic entirely different from that used in the physical sciences, and this logic is necessary and appropriate to the field. While rigorous mathematical deduction would be preferable, such analysis is inapplicable to the multivariate problems faced in that field.

4. Some (SOME!) physicists are so wrapped up in their own field that they cannot appreciate the subtleties of other fields, and do not accord them the respect they deserve.

It in no way diminishes the importance of the chemical bond to know that it arises from quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, and the prevalence of temperatures and pressures that allow atoms and molecules to exist. Similarly, it does not diminish the significance of life on Earth to know that it emerged from physics and chemistry and the special historical circumstances permitting the chemical reactions to proceed that produced the ancestral life form and thus initiated biological evolution. Finally, it does not detract from the achievements of the human race, including the triumphs of the human intellect and the glorious works of art that have been produced for tens of thousand of years, to know that our intelligence and self-awareness, greater than those of the other animals, have emerged from the laws of biology plus the specific accidents of hominid evolution.

When we human beings experience awe in the face of the splendors of nature, when we show love for one another, and when we care for our more distant relatives–the other organisms with which we share the biosphere–we are exhibiting aspects of the human condition that are no less wonderful for being emergent phenomena.

http://www.santafe.edu/~mgm/nature.html

Your comment about traits appearing randomly is the kind of thing evolutionists try to avoid. Nobody’s happy explaining a phenomenon as a fluke. “And then, a miracle happened!” is never accepted as part of an evolutionary explanation.

I don’t know any ‘evolutionists’ who try to avoid it. Not everything is adaptive or selected for. Some stuff just is there. It happens. It’s not at all like saying that a miracle occurred.

I believe that we have reached the nub of the problem: that physicists look down their noses at any form of science that does not operate in the same way that physics operates. I agree that the rigorous methods used in physics are the best possible methods to use, and, to the extent that they are applicable in other fields, they should be used. However, I do not accept the insistence that mathematically rigorous methods are the only means of establishing scientific truth or useful explanations of natural phenomena.

You’re welcome to say, “It ain’t science”, if you wish. You’re welcome to call all members of that field witch doctors and quacks. They’ll just keep chugging along, figuring things out without you. And your silly academic prejudices will continue to perpetuate the silly academic divisions with which academia is riven.

A theory has to provide a causal link. E.g., if one says, competition for sex with females gives larger males an advantage and males with larger canines a natural selection advantage, then one has something that purports to explain the correlations noted above. Then, this theory would say that human ancestors were not polygynous but were monogamous or polyandrous.

If one was going purely by correlations, then I could say that whatever makes the bonobo SD less than the chimpanzee SD is, in greater degree, what makes the human SD smaller than the chimpanzee SD; and monogamy is not it.

Once upon a time there was a species X. Its environment changed in such a way as to present a challenge. We don’t know that the environment changed, but we do know that trait Y began showing up with increasing frequency, and trait Y would be a good response to the environmental change. However, there arose a problem in the form of a conflict between trait Y and a previously existing trait Z. This caused members of the species to fall prey to predator P. Those members of the species that changed their behavior in direction D suffered fewer losses to Predator P and so they took a larger place in the gene pool. We have noted that the teeth of the species did show a change, which suggests that their diet included more of Nutrient N, which is most easily obtained by change in feeding behavior D.

Note that, in this little story, lots of things are unknown: the identity of Predator P, whether Predator P really was predating upon the species, the change in the environment, the change in behavior, or the new nutrient N. All we know is that Y shows up with increasing frequency in the fossil record, and that the teeth show a change that is consistent with the hypothesis. This may seem like utter speculation on the part of evolutionary psychologists, but they judge this scenario based on their knowledge of predator behavior (”how likely is it that a predator could benefit from the interaction of traits Y and Z?”), their assessment of genetic change (”how plausible is it that behavioral change D could appear quickly enough, or pre-exist for recruitment, in the given species?”), their judgement of the likely benefits of the change in behavior D, and their hunch as to how closely the change in dentition matches the change in feeding behavior hypothesized. There’s an enormous amount of judgement being applied here, something that doesn’t happen in the physical sciences, but that doesn’t make this unscientific.

Your comment about traits appearing randomly is the kind of thing evolutionists try to avoid. Nobody’s happy explaining a phenomenon as a fluke. “And then, a miracle happened!” is never accepted as part of an evolutionary explanation.

I don’t understand what you are driving at with your final comment about humans living in societies similar to bonobos. Indeed, there are many similarities; there are also some differences. The foraging troop is fundamentally similar to the hunter-gatherer group, the main differences being the distance that males travel from the group, and the greater reliance on meat-eating.

It could be explanation, but it might not be. It’s a story. The story needs evidence, too.

As for your last statement, it’s well-known, I think, that there are traits which are not adaptive and are pretty much just random.

This is a just-so story. Evolutionary Psychology seems to have many just-so stories, such as the origin of the “seven-year itch”.

The inferences on sexual dimorphism - Orangutan males are twice the weight of females and orangutans lead solitary lives. Chimpazees have a 30-40% weight difference between male and female, Bonobos have a 14% weight difference, Humans have around a 5% weight difference. As far as I can tell, perhaps the weight difference trend is smaller with increasing sexual interest/availability of the female and hence increasing amount of sex. Humans might have lived in bonobo-type societies early in their evolution. What rules it out?

Think about the fundamental character of evolutionary theory. Evolution is intrinsically a time-sequential process. “The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection” describes a sequence of causally related events. A story is a sequence of causally related events. Evolution at its heart is a story.

You are certainly not correct in distorting my assertion into “a failure to come up with a satisfactory evolutionary story for a trait means that is not evolved”. A failure to come up with a satisfactory explanatory story for a trait means either that evolutionary theory is incorrect (unlikely but possible), or that the scientist has misundertood or misreported the trait.

As for evolutionary evidence, am I correct to interpret your claim as “a failure to come up with a satisfactory evolutionary story for a trait means that is not evolved”? That certainly sounds like proof by lack of imagination to me, and I doubt that there’s anyone out there in the field of evolution who would agree with it.

The classic example of this is the genesis of human language. Obviously, language leaves no fossil evidence, so by your standards it is impossible to know anything about the genesis of language. In fact, scientists working on the problem have figured out a great deal. Yes, it’s all speculative in the sense that it’s all very indirect. But that doesn’t mean that we dismiss it all as unscientific hocus-pocus. These people have put together a huge assemblage of facts to infer a continually improving story of how language developed.

Lastly, your assertion “The lack of storytelling is not, however, used to falsify evolutionary concepts.” is flatly incorrect. A great deal of the literature is dedicated to addressing precisely that problem. A scientist who makes a claim that cannot be supported with evolutionary logic gets shot down real quick. I suggest that you read Richard Dawkins’ Climbing Mount Improbable for a detailed explication of these principles, with many good examples.

The story of human evolution could tell us a lot if we knew what it was. For things like physical traits, we have the fossil record. We also can do comparative genetics for areas of the genome we understand. For this sort of storytelling, on the other hand, we end up too far in the realm of speculation for my tastes.

Your example of the use of storytelling is, in fact, the exact one I gave, so I’m not sure why you’re repeating it to me. The lack of storytelling is not, however, used to falsify evolutionary concepts. That’s the path that the ID people want to follow.