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« Cops and Crime | Main | Elsewhere »

June 17, 2005

 Women's Brains, Men's Brains

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Steve Sailer linked to a terrific article by the LATimes' Robert Lee Hotz. Its pretext is a Canadian psychologist who dissects and compares brains named Sandra Witelson. But its real subject is the anatomical differences between female and male brains.

First, a handful of basic facts:

In the prime of life, the cerebral cortex contains 25 billion neurons linked through 164 trillion synapses.

Thoughts thread through 7.4 million miles of dendrite fibers and 62,000 miles of axons so compacted that the entire neural network is no larger than a coconut.

Now to the sexy stuff:

[Men's brains are on average larger than women's brains. But --]Women's brains ... seem to be faster and more efficient than men's.

All in all, men appear to have more gray matter, made up of active neurons, and women more of the white matter responsible for communication between different areas of the brain.

Overall, women's brains seem to be more complexly corrugated, suggesting that more complicated neural structures lie within, researchers at UCLA found in August.

Men and women appear to use different parts of the brain to encode memories, sense emotions, recognize faces, solve certain problems and make decisions. Indeed, when men and women of similar intelligence and aptitude perform equally well, their brains appear to go about it differently, as if nature had separate blueprints.

As far as I can tell, what this basically means is that, if people were computers, women would be Macs and men would be PC's.

Meanwhile, a Royal Society study concludes (among other things) that "men [are] four times more likely than women to be working in or studying science."

Interesting info that someone ought to forward to Larry Summers' office.

Best,

Michael

posted by Michael at June 17, 2005




Comments

So when will we see apologies from the LA Times and Robert Lee Hotz? And who will they write their checks out to? Is actually producing evidence of differences between men and women more reprehensible than asking for studies?

OK, I apologize in advance, but it's Friday and my impulse control is shot:

Michael: "Its pretext is Albert Einstein's brain and a Canadian psychologist who dissects and compares brains named Sandra Witelson."

But how many brains are named "Sandra Witelson"? Heck, I don't even know anyone who names his or her* brain, and "Sandra Witelson" seems such an unlikely choice.

So many questions; so little time.

* Is the norm to use a same sex name or opposite sex name?**

** See, there's another question.

Posted by: Doug Sundseth on June 17, 2005 5:51 PM

It'll be interesting to see how PC and scientific research sort themselves out over the coming decades, won't it? I wonder if the science will eventually vaporize PC, or whether they'll make some kind of accomodation with each other.

That's a hilarious language-catch, many thanks. I'd been staring suspiciously at that sentence myself. I think I'll let it stand as a monument to really bad writing ...

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on June 17, 2005 6:02 PM

"...monument to really bad writing..."

I think that overstates the situation. I knew what you meant, as did, I'm sure, everyone else who read it. In order to make the joke, I had to read only the words, not the implied meaning, of the sentence. Since I thought it was funny, I did that, but I hope you didn't take it amiss. (If I've offended, please accept my apology.)

I try not to point out spelling or grammatical errors because they're so easy to commit, but I'll make exceptions for replies in kind and comedic effect, understanding that by doing so I open myself up to the same. Live by the violated Gricean implicature; die by the violated Gricean implicature -- or something like that.

Posted by: Doug Sundseth on June 17, 2005 7:02 PM

“It'll be interesting to see how PC and scientific research sort themselves out over the coming decades, won't it? I wonder if the science will eventually vaporize PC, or whether they'll make some kind of accommodation with each other.”

Michael, I’m curious as to how science and PC could make an accommodation with one another without one or the other giving up the ghost. PC is, IMO, a movement, or attitude perhaps, primarily concerned with altering language to redress real or imagined wrongs, and to avoid giving offense to certain groups. William Lind calls PC, “censorship based on the social mores of the times”, and he’s got the central idea right, I think: control of what is allowed to be expressed.

Science is a method of gaining knowledge, and the body of knowledge so gained. What accommodation such an enterprise could make with what are basically a bunch of language police, without ceasing thereby to be itself, escapes me entirely. Needless to say, scientists themselves do make such accommodations all the time, for example when Craig Venter bloviates about the concept of race being “scientifically meaningless”. But that’s just good PR. Do you mean something more than that?

(Sorry if I sound bitter, but I live in Canada, and have just been exposed in my work life to an unusually wasteful and irrational example of PC censorship...it happens a lot up here.)

Posted by: PatrickH on June 17, 2005 8:04 PM

Doug -- You're keeping me a little more honest than I'd otherwise be. That's a good thing.

Patrick -- You write "I’m curious as to how science and PC could make an accommodation with one another without one or the other giving up the ghost." I'm curious too. From a logical/sensible point of view it doesn't seem like they could co-exist. And it certainly seems that -- with the amount of bio/genetic info that seems likely to arrive in short order -- that PC would stand a chance. On the other hand, realistically speaking, what PC represents psychologically and politicalls is pretty hard to deny. I don't like it, but there it is: that oppressive need to not offend, to enforce an idiot version of "egalitarianism," to deny differences ... It's pretty hard to will that impulse away, let alone argue it away. (Where would all the starry-eyed/bossy first-grade teachers do with themselves if they weren't forcing their version of "niceness" on kids?) But you've also got me wondering: maybe the specific version of this impulse that is PC will go away under pressure from scientific findings as well as young people, who seem fed up with all the Boomer baloney that's been laid on them. I can't imagine the impulse to make-nice in a Stalinist kind of way (as you say, controlling things via language) will go away. There just seem to be people who are driven to try to enforce these programs. I wonder what they'll get up to if PC gets vaporized. Any hunch?

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on June 18, 2005 11:43 AM

I wonder what Summers really thinks. He's had a successful career - wasn't he a Clinton appointee or cabinet member? - Anyway now waddling into retirement years with a belly-full of bullshit that he force-spooned into himself. He's got power but I bet he feels like shit. He has apologized to the world and abased himself without reserve before a perpetually offended humankind.

But really, what is unscientific or oppressive about asking about the genetic component to anything? Does this now mean that Harvard will stop inquiring into genetic difference between men and women? Won't Harvard's famed reputation suffer? Will kids want to explore the sciences at Harvard knowing they could get into trouble for exploring certain lines of inquiry? Will you want to send your science kid to Harvard now?

A slightly related thought:
For decades the sciences have settled in like bloated emirs, not lifting a finger as PC deconstruction ate and voided the humanities. I always wondered when the PC crap would start to devour the sciences. We is here, baby.

Posted by: Das on June 19, 2005 2:53 PM

The funniest thing to me about the whole Larry Summers flap---I don't know anyone in flyover country who took offense---and this includes a female PhD in science. I think everybody here understood it was just a question, after all, and who not ask it...A handful of northeastern academics blew this whole thing sky-high. Maybe its why the Dems keep losing elections.

Posted by: annette on June 20, 2005 9:38 AM

-- " if people were computers, women would be Macs and men would be PC's." --

hmmmm.... That must be why I like PCs better.

Posted by: Lynn S on June 20, 2005 1:30 PM

My boyfriend and I both prefer our PCs -- and he has a work-issued PowerBook. I think you might be on to something here, MB.

Posted by: Michael non-Blowhard on June 20, 2005 4:20 PM

Patrick -- You write "I’m curious as to how science and PC could make an accommodation with one another without one or the other giving up the ghost." I'm curious too. From a logical/sensible point of view it doesn't seem like they could co-exist. And it certainly seems that -- with the amount of bio/genetic info that seems likely to arrive in short order -- that PC would stand a chance. On the other hand, realistically speaking, what PC represents psychologically and politicalls is pretty hard to deny. I don't like it, but there it is: that oppressive need to not offend, to enforce an idiot version of "egalitarianism," to deny differences ... It's pretty hard to will that impulse away, let alone argue it away. (Where would all the starry-eyed/bossy first-grade teachers do with themselves if they weren't forcing their version of "niceness" on kids?) But you've also got me wondering: maybe the specific version of this impulse that is PC will go away under pressure from scientific findings as well as young people, who seem fed up with all the Boomer baloney that's been laid on them. I can't imagine the impulse to make-nice in a Stalinist kind of way (as you say, controlling things via language) will go away. There just seem to be people who are driven to try to enforce these programs. I wonder what they'll get up to if PC gets vaporized. Any hunch?


Michael,

Science will “vaporize” PC (an image I find quite cheering), as it has Christianity, for example. In particular, findings in human biodiversity (the kind talked about by Steve Sailer, GNXP, e.g.) will finish this particular incarnation of the eternally recurring impulse to control other people’s behavior in order to help them (IMO, a fully desirable and fully human impulse, in its place). What will replace PC after discoveries in h-bd destroy its claims? I have no idea. But something will come along to replace it. Something always does.

Oh, and completely off-topic, I bored you a few months ago with a rant about crosswords, to which I am completely addicted. I recommended a book about crosswords to you then, and I’m going to repeat the offense, but this time with a better book! It’s called “Crossworld”, by Marc Romano, a clever guy who writes well and is a very good solver to boot. He is especially good at seeming modest while actually displaying a positively chest-beating egotism about his crosswording prowess. Try him out, he’s fun.

Posted by: PatrickH on June 22, 2005 8:05 PM

Oops. Sorry about including your entire post in my reply. Don't know how that happened.

Posted by: PatrickH on June 22, 2005 8:06 PM


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