From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu May 23 2002 - 21:12:46 MDT
Ah, some public support comes flowing in! Knew I
could shame you guys into doing the right thing... ;)
Anyway, my point was not to attack women, little as
this is likely to be believed by some of the women on
this list, but to try to uncover a little of the
iceberg of memetic addiction that keeps many, likely
most, women from reaching their potential and - not
incidentally - places them politically all too often
squarely in opposition to general extropian goals.
Just think how much further along the path to the
singularity we would be if people in general were even
5% more intelligent and/or rational. Major long term
studies by the University of Chicago, in particular,
show pretty conclusively that when you factor out all
the other variables you might expect to make a
difference, then serious early childhood enrichment
results in major long-term, substantive gains in
mental cabaility. Kids who attended Montessori
preschools, for example, maintained about a three year
academic advantage over the general public.
Montessori, however, herself (one of those women, BTW,
whose life I would not have traded for ten million
average men, given that extremely unlikely choice)
recognized that her method started too late. She was
convinced that much more could be done if one started
from birth with systematic enrichment, feedback and
challenges. Unfortunately, she said that she had
enough to do with what she had already taken on, and
besides, she couldn't figure out how to make it pay as
a business, and she sure didn't have the support of
the state academia to force people to pay for it.
Anyway, evidence is that we could get 100% to 200%
improvements - but we don't..
With all the progress we have made in so many fields
thru applying the scientific method and then allowing
engineers and industrialists to apply the results to
practical day-to-day life, why is not just our
"educational" system, but our child rearing practices
in general such an unbelievable mess? This is a field
that is dominated by women, and has been for a long
time. Not only are women the primary decision-making
consumers of education during the formative years, and
also the vast majority of the professionals in the
field through junior high at least, but many, many
women claim this as virtually their exclusive
territory. And what a disaster they have created...
Am I claiming that there is something genetic that
makes so many women incompetent at the very thing that
so many of them claim to be the defining purpose and
fulfillment of their lives? Not at all. There are
probably genetic components having to do with
temperment that are interwoven with the memetic
problems, but women are certainly fully human and
fully capable of choosing rational values.
Women, on average, seem to be about as intelligent as
men, although the shape of the bell curve is
different. More women cluster at the middle. There
are fewer geniuses and idiots, simply due to the fact
that the sex gene apparently holds so many of the key
factors in biological potential for intelligence.
Women having two copies means they don't express
recessive negative genes nearly so often - nor
recessive positive ones.
If that were the only factor, I could make a case that
since one brilliant person in our modern, specialized
society is worth ten thousand average persons, (and
when I say this, I'm not talking worth to someone who
knows them personally, or has a strong relationship
with them, but rather, how much their presence
actually contributes to the general level of
happiness, health, etc.) then the larger number of
brilliant men would certainly tip the balance in favor
of saying that men on average are more valuable.
However, there are also those occasional women who get
double doses of the really good genes, which cannot
happen with men. Those one-in-ten-million women
occupy the positions way out there on the curve, that
men will never see - until we get better gene therapy
anyway. So, what is one Ayn Rand worth?
So, my position is that observation indicates that
women are underachieving rather woefully, and this
could be a problem in getting to the singularity -
miss it by a minute and you just lost the next million
years, right? ...
News flash! News flash! Noted would-be up-and-coming
prison guard and reported Senatorial confidante
Chandra Levy's body has been found, and a nation
grieves (except for $ABC, $CBS, and $NBC). For
further information and timely updates, tune to any
major network 24/7, or buy any major news magazine.
For Chandra tee-shirts, clik here <stupid.com>. Q?
DID CHANDRA KNOW PRINCESS DI???? Would they have
gotten along???? More later.
(oh, Stephen Jay Gould, a biologist, died.)
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