From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Tue Jan 30 2001 - 08:39:46 MST
At 12:25 PM +0100 1/30/01, KPJ wrote:
>In my experience, most men who claim that females have higher intelligence
>than males do that to make females feel he is a nice guy, a prerequisite
>for mating.
Yes.
And in my experience, bigots who want to hide their bigotry protest
the loudest that they are not.
Also, in my experience, many who claim some superior trait for a
group are really overcompensating for beliefs that they are inferior
in other ways. (E.g, "women are smarter because they have to
overcome their natural weakness" or "blacks are stronger because they
are not as far evolved as whites", etc.)
Furthermore, those who are bigoted also seem to claim that their
actions are really to help the poor group that they believe is
inferior. E.g., "I revere women because they need my protection" or
"slave-owners really provided a good life for their slaves" or
"imposing all our religious rules onto the masses will make them
happier!"
>Personally, I notice no greater difference in intelligence between the
>human sexes. There exists a number of behavioural differences, mainly due
>to social programming, but also from hormonal differences, and, finally,
>from DNA differences. The social programming makes the greatest difference.
There are a lot of effeminate men and macho women. Even if some
trait is statistically higher in one group over another, it still
isn't likely enough to use for predictions. Trying to project a
slightly more likely trait onto an entire group is just flawed
estimation.
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com>
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