What if there really are racial/sexual differences between people?

[Silvanus]

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist.... scientists need money to conduct research. If someone wants to push an agenda that global warming exists so they can sell electric cars or something, they might "fund" that research. Obviously, you and I and most people would hope that the scientists involved would have more integrity than that, but it has happened before (Wakefield) and I'm sure it still happens to some extent.

That was my point. That the powers that be, whether it's government, society, academia, etc, dictate what is researched or not and how it is done.

There are three huge issues with that. First of all, it would have to be literally the largest conspiracy ever concocted on earth, enveloping almost every scientist involved in climate research, climatology, etc, as well as scientific institutions around the world. And all the journals, and all the peer-review structures, and most of the governments on earth. A conspiracy of absurdly large proportion. It is of far higher likelihood that the moon landings were faked, because it would require far fewer people to be in on it.

Secondly, there is much less money to be made in electric cars than in industries that harm the environment. There is more financial gain to be made opposing green initiatives than supporting them.

Thirdly, there's no evidence that a significant amount of the funding can be traced back to electric car companies, or what have you, so it's just idle speculation. On the other hand, when research is carried out that concludes that we shouldn't worry about global warming, we can usually find that the funding came from a corporation with a heavy interest in denying environmental damage [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/sep/19/ethicalliving.g2].

 

[Nimcha]

I never really get this argument. There are vast differences between any number of people and most of us don't have thousands of ways to deal with the thousands of different people we interact with in our lives.

*shrug*

 

[Megalodon]

I'll give an example: we don't know exactly what causes a person to be straight or gay or whatever, but we don know it is not a choice, but there is extreme reluctance to delve any further as to the actual mechanics of it, due to fears of people looking for a "fix" of some kind. And the last thing that members of the LGBT community need is someone telling them that they should be "cured." That kind of thinking is what kids sent to gay camps.

not to mentioned being "cured" in vitro

that said however I think its beneficial for the LGBT community to stop relying so much on the "born this way/can't help it" argument as it appeals to people whos opinions shouldn't matter in the first place

Do you mean in utero? Or do you mean screening IVF embryos before implantation? I ask because the use of in vitro (removed from normal biological context) alone is either strange (seeing how IVF is shorter) or wrong.

 

[gargantual]

I'll give an example: we don't know exactly what causes a person to be straight or gay or whatever, but we don know it is not a choice, but there is extreme reluctance to delve any further as to the actual mechanics of it, due to fears of people looking for a "fix" of some kind. And the last thing that members of the LGBT community need is someone telling them that they should be "cured." That kind of thinking is what kids sent to gay camps.

not to mentioned being "cured" in vitro

that said however I think its beneficial for the LGBT community to stop relying so much on the "born this way/can't help it" argument as it appeals to people whos opinions shouldn't matter in the first place

Welp. Society at large should wait till Ghost in the Shell-style, full transhumanism becomes a reality and our synapses or consciousness are the only parts of our humanity that can be electronically preserved or mapped. Till then, society gay or straight are going to express whatever aligns closer to their initial sexual identities, or proclivities. Even in a transhuman state, just as many people would choose their born identities as people looking to walk through many different shoes.

I think that leads back into why first world societies like ours prize ideals of independence to begin with. In the one big accident that is our human existence, we create our own meaning based on these personal drives. Some ideas change us, or fortify previously held views, but only because somewhere inside we were predisposed to accepting tenets of fresh viewpoints anyways.

better off people choosing whether they want the status quo or to go beyond rather than some matrix like "architect" presuming ALL of our 'best interests' based on gathered data, and other natural factors they won't measure or account for.

 

[Lightknight]

Eh, I seriously doubt this conversation can be had objectively. I'll preface my following post by absolutely stating that nothing I say is to indicate any kind of superiority or inferiority of races/sexes. I am only discussing facts that we know and trying to describe what we don't know and why it's so hard for science to separate nature from nurture when it comes to high-level functional species like humans.

There are differences between races and sexes in people. We see studies and research on that fact all the time. Hell, there are even differences within the same races according to region. A Kenyan whose lineage is traced back in the mountains is going to have noticeable differences between a Kenyan whose lineage is on the plains.

Thats not race though, thats direct heredity rather than due to being part of an extended gene pool that end up sharing visible physical characteristics.

Isn't skin color just another element of heredity? Isn't this what people are generally asking when they discuss differences between different races? If they were just talking about skin color then skin color itself comes to mind as a difference and the qualities those pigmentations have in relation to things like sun exposure and cold.

Because certain regions lended themselves towards certain racial qualities, we find that certain races in aggregate portray differences just like we'd expect to see in any species on Earth. For example, bone density. Men have higher bone density than women but black people have higher bone density than white people. This is known to impact athletic performance but not as much as testosterone in general. Black people are more susceptible to heart disease and a few other things and I'm sure white people have their own shit too, like skin cancer.

So these are noted average differences between sexes and races beyond just the outward appearance. Males have greater hand-eye coordination even when comparing male/female athletes. There are a number of studies that already exist which present the data. Women are generally shown to be better at multi-tasking and men with spacial awareness (perhaps related to hand-eye coordination). There are other potential psychological differences but it is incredibly hard to accurately distiguish culturally/socially conditioned differences from biological ones. There are also systemic issues that can impact the data. For example, there are well known numbers in the US that show the black population as the single largest demographic of jail and prison population despite being a minority in the overall US population. So, does this mean there is a racial difference causing this extreme disproportionate trend of criminal activity? We don't know. Other factors like poverty, culture, an unfair/unjust system, and any other number of conditions complicate the numbers. The black community also accounts for over 50% of homicides which means longer sentences too. But all the same questions as to why come right back up. Really, all we can rely on are anatomical/physical differences and those are pretty minor. It is truly difficult to separate nature and nurture where it comes to high level mental processing and that includes tendencies towards crimes. I personally lean towards the poverty theory as the prime cause in this scenario rather than biology. But I don't have data to back that up besides studies on correlation between poverty and crime. Even with that, it's not enough to go that far since poverty itself is colorblind (for example, 30 million whites make less than $10k compared to the 6 million blacks in that category. 28 million whites make around $10k compared to around 5 million black. 22mil/4.5mil (white/black) for the $20k level). So even though I subscribe to that theory, it clearly needs more fleshing out. It is likely a combination of factors.

What the general studies and resulting data does not indicate is that one race/sex is better than another. Perhaps on average one would be better at specific tasks but you'll always have individuals that don't match the norm that would throw that off and just because one group is better at one task doesn't mean they wouldn't be worse off at another. So even finding out that one group is statistically more likely to have an advantage at something can't account for individual performance (thankfully).

At least humans aren't as distinct in differences as breeds of dogs or cats or all the other animals in the world. It's actually somewhat remarkable that there aren't some humans with vastly different traits than the rest of us. Instead, we're left to having to look at numbers in large populations to find differences. Whereas I can certainly tell the difference between a chihuahua and most any other type of dog. Complexion of skin isn't even all that big. I mean, there are several breeds of animals that can have different colored fur that are practically identical in every other way.

 

[Thaluikhain]

There ARE racial and sexual difference between people. It has been widely demonstrated. A Japanese perceives a bird's singing with the part of the brain that recognizes speech; an European perceives that bird's singing with the part of the brain that recognizes music. That is one heck of a huge difference, and there are so many, many more.
And women and men think differently: that's another undeniable fact we all know.

How much of that is genetic, and how much is cultural, though?

 

[Thaluikhain]

There ARE racial and sexual difference between people. It has been widely demonstrated. A Japanese perceives a bird's singing with the part of the brain that recognizes speech; an European perceives that bird's singing with the part of the brain that recognizes music. That is one heck of a huge difference, and there are so many, many more.
And women and men think differently: that's another undeniable fact we all know.

How much of that is genetic, and how much is cultural, though?

Well, your comment made me remember... I'm not sure about it, but perhaps that article did mention that a Japanese person raised in Europe ends up using that other part of the brain when listening to birds, and vice versa.
I'm not sure about it since that was a newspaper article I had to translate for a college exam years ago, but if it was like that... well, that does hinder my previous statement.

On a related note, I'm led to believe that the written forms of Japanese and English are so different, that there are some people with certain forms of dyslexia which affect their ability to read English, but not Japanese. Including native English speakers.

 

[Lightknight]

Isn't skin color just another element of heredity?

Yes and no. Yes it is heredity. No it isn't enough to make any sort of judgment about a person.

Didn't say it was. In fact, I've said the opposite. The only thing you can say about a white/black man is that he is a white/black man but no other absolutes go with that.

As far back as my lineage can be traced back, its all European, all white. Now if I went and had a child with three separate people who were black - one with lineage completely from Africa, one with lineage tracing back to Africa but then existing in the US (slaves), and then the same except for Europe, they'll all be "bi-racial", half-white, half-black. However, due to ancestry, there will be significant differences, despite all having a shallow appearance of shared ancestry. Judgments based on race are woefully fallible. As I said earlier, there was a drug approved by the FDA for only people who were black. Their studies (not quite robust, but not exactly inept either) showed a result that people who were black were affected, and people who were not black were not affected. So its race, right? No, because across the pond, you would find white Europeans that could benefit from the drug, and black Europeans who would not. Race appeared to be relevant, but a simple expansion of the scope of the tests, by examining people of all races with different lineages, showed that no, race wasn't significantly relevant, and that such assumptions would lead to doctors prescribing a useless prescription or not prescribing a prescription that could be useful for a patient.

Sure, there's nothing there I disagree with.

They're not "racial qualities". They're hereditary qualities. The "race" of a person can be blurred very, very significantly in one simple generation because "race" is only a superficial characteristic.

Actually, when the studies are based on race then they are considered traits that the race hold in aggregate. Yes, you and I agree that there's a whole lot more to things. All the term "racial trait" generally means is that there is a higher prevalence of that trait within that race.

The truth is that breaking things down by region and ancestry is too hard to do and too specific to be meaningful to conversation and analysis. So it's broken down by race because race is the next best thing we have to estimate general ancestral regions even though, like I said, a mountain Kenyan is going to have significant variance from a plains Kenyan (same as a Norse Mountain White guy is likely going to be different from an Italian white guy even if they have the same skin tone).

Not entirely true. In the abstract, yes, but there's a lot of factors to that, not just their race, not even their genetic lineage. Environmental factors appear to play a huge role, and its factual that there are diaparities among race, thing like income, access to healthcare, which are the result of hundreds of years of racial politics in government and society.

Sure. But now you're just discussing cause which means we've moved passed accepting the difference existing. Which is the point of the thread. There ARE differences in aggregate. It's just a question of nature/nurture.

Thats a behavior. Behavior is strongly shaped by one's environment , see: all of psychology and neurology ever. Developmental differences based on being exposed to different environment, particularly more hostile ones, have reliably quantifiable differences that exist regardless of race or genealogy. There aren't any multi-ethnic studies spanning across multiple continents, cultures, and social and economic classes that can reliably demonstrate that a race is prone to a certain behavior regardless of any of those factors.

Actually, if you'd studied psychology, and I have studied psychology, you'd know that nature vs. nurture has been the central component of controversy throughout the entire existence of the field. Behavior is often a combination of both which is what has made it so controversial because both sides were able to point to evidence that they were right and were unable to consider the combination of the two. The truth is, just as regional differences give us physical variances, so too should we be able to honestly expect psychological differences. It's just that the variances may be too minor compared to the impact of all the environmental things I mentioned. But according to papers I've read on the subject there should be psychological evolution too like if there was a greater propensity for aggression or avoidance compared to region. Areas where aggression was more rewarded or avoidance was. This would be something incredibly hard to separate out from nurture and I don't personally think we'll ever really be able to do that unless it's associated with a measurable hormone release rather than purely mental wiring.

No, they don't. They are the cause. That can be quantified. Studies of a broad scope measuring race alongside factors like economic status can be directly linked to how likely a person is to behave. Somebody who grows up in a stable, upper-class home by unconditionally loving, non-abusive guardians with access to a high quality education and healthcare will consistently be more successful in life than somebody who grows up poverty-stricken, moving around constantly under the guardianship of one neglectful and abusive parent with no access to a good education and poor, if non-existent, healthcare.

You can only establish that they may influence the results. You cannot claim with any justification that they are the only cause and that nature has no hand to play. Can you honestly claim insight on something we admittedly can't prove? My entire point was that there are too many environmental factors to claim it being a racial difference. I'm unsure why you're debating that. I admit that there can be actual psychological differences but to what extent that would make a difference in anything is completely unknown.

Meanwhile, "race", with its superficial distinctions, can not be reliably quantified in any way. Its not that their race and the "biology" of their race is a "minor" factor, its a non-factor, because race doesn't have any strong correlation with any genetic traits that can be linked to behavior.

Look, race implies a general regional ancestry. On average, people who trace their ancestry to Africa a thousand years ago will likely share more traits in common with other people who trace their ancestry to Africa too than someone tracing their ancestry to India. The more specific you can cast the net (say by country instead of continent or region of a country instead of country), the higher the degree of genetic similarities should become.

Yes, the continent of Africa is hella huge just like any other continent or major land region but race is still a quality that puts someone in a generic area of the world. That will carry differences with it.

Look, what you are arguing is that you can't apply this to individuals. That's entirely correct. But we're not discussion whether or not there's differences between Bob and Ted. Are we? I would never see someone of a certain race and assume therefore that they like 'X' or will behave like 'Y'. Most of our generation was raised that way and I'm guessing that trend is only going to improve with the next generations. However, I would say that people of X race have a higher propensity or expression of Y trait because that's how aggregates work. Aggregates are just numbers. Applying those numbers to individuals without any knowledge of the person is racism/sexism. I would personally say that the variance between two individuals is actually likely to be greater than measurable variances between overall races.

But it's silly to be afraid of acknowledging aggregate differences. Of course a woman can like Action flicks even if the average woman doesn't. That doesn't mean there isn't a statistical difference or that's it's ok or wrong for her to like or not like anything. We've gotten to a point where we can't just discuss numbers objectively for fear that some bigot wearing a hood will use it for some insane speech. But the truth is, those bigots with hoods are going to have that speech with or without valid data and it's not like we're finding anything that is really meaningful to the individual. Even if we ever did find something meaningful somehow, why does that mean we should be afraid of truth and obscure or even hide it? Why not embrace differences and uniqueness the same way we do with other qualities in people?

 

[wetnap]

Bullsh8t on what? The idea that women should have the maturity to not get upset over cartoon women?

Never mind its all based on a false premise pushed by feminists for so long. The idea of the media being as influential as it is, as damaging as it is. I wish the media were that effective, if skinny models made women thin, we wouldn't have the obesity crisis we do in America.

most female chrachters women like are above averge in terms of attractiveness, check out batgirls new suit, not sexualised, shes still attractive. We don't get jealous over fictional charachters, that is wuite franly sexist...

Most character ARE exceptional. Thats why they are super heros.
I'm not impressed by bagirls new suit, its a perfect example why feminist comics don't work, that is what they aim for, censorship and blandness. You could almost predict every change in the suit based on just thinking about what a steretypical feminist, who is the modern day prude demand of such a character, of course all sexuality is removed. Its why feminists liked the character of chell in portal, bland, almost character free and just not something anyone noticed at all. But good job showing us what to expect from feminists, a character who is flat as a board, and covered from head to toe. But I mean why stop there, form fitting butt hugging suits can be considered both impractical and sexist, in combat she obviously needs armor, put her in a suit like samus, then you can't tell her sex at all, if she is even human, that would be optimal for feminists.

Anyways this concern points to the child like mentality perpetuated by feminism. The assumption is feminine weakness, mental fragility, and thus they must be protected from cartoons women with larger breasts than they have. The same issue raised for men would get the rational response of just grow up. Its only for women that the standard is lowered to the point where people have to walk on egg shells to avoid shattering their fragile psychs, and then yet...we are supposed to believe these same women are "strong independent women"?

Its true because otherwise there is no problem. People who are driven to create and consume regardless of popularity create their own market.

"there is no problem" because you havent considered how mainstream entertaintment might seem to anyone who isn't you, and anyone who does question your comics/games you can put neatly into the "feminist" box

No I simply don't demand mainstream entertainment cater to a vocal minority group. You are like some man who claims that its only fair if katniss in the hunger games would be better off as a man, and thats the only way they could possibly enjoy that film.

Not everything is your business. A old religious prude has no right to make demands on lady gaga or 50 cents musical choices for instance.

Doesn't matter because men created the continuation into adult comics based on their own interests. Even when they were made for children, there was no huge readership of things like superman for girls. It just didn't happen. Girls had their nancy drew books at the rest. If anything it shows the divergence, chick detective shows are all the rage for female audiences, who make up the majority of tv viewership today. Its why so many older female lead shows exist now. This again, is just another example of how the genders have different interests.

but girls and women DO diverge from what its "assumed" they will like, you SEE us all over the internet, you may think there are too few of us too matter but somtimes being less sexist is not a zero sum game, it dosen't mean always changing what is for the worst or changing some things at all (as I said everything has its place) but this same old "DAE FEMENAZIS GONNA TAKE AWAY MUH GAMEZ" attitude comes up which is not only wrong but somtimes indicates a self centered world veiw, if people spent less time being reactionary and more time listening then we wouldnt be going around in the same hamster wheel

Its not assumed, its just true. Even in young monkeys, given a choice of gendered toys, the obvious happens, and there is no human "patriarchy" telling them to do this. It IS a zero sum game when you demand that others accomodate your supposed tastes which are of questionable legitimacy. Its just very notable feminists don't fill the supposed market gaps they claim exist. Because if you can create comics or video games that cater to 50% of the population which you claim are underserved, you will make hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. Again, one has to ask, do women hate money or is it just that its more likely you don't even believe the things you say yourself. Women don't watch the WNBA because of sexism, its because of their personal choices. And this constant mentality of women being victims who need to be saved by others, because they can't do things for themselves, even lift a finger to draw their own comics at the minimum, means it does cost men something in the end. Who funded the WNBA? Women? No, it was men. Men funded that joke to show you how wrong you are, and how you don't even really believe the things you say.

Batman remains great because it fundamentally remains a male story, it hasn't recently yielded to the calls to dilute its story by injecting unnecessary female characters into the story.

which I don't belive anyone has done recently....and as I said there are (albeit less notable) female charachters in the batverse....alongside a book called Gotham central

It hasn't been done recently, and thats why its remained great.... as I said, alicia silverstone.... once you add a woman to the mix the only way to rationalize it is to either give her super powers, or massively loosen the grip on all reality, as schumacher had to do. Because a woman punching out men isn't going to really be believable. Reality constrains what you can do with females in male stories. Just how it works.

Missing the point entirely. It was mothers who threw those things out, which says a bit about female interest in general, but its more about the general populations lack of respect for this kind of thing for all those years. It was stuff to be thrown out without a second thought.

yes it shows that comics were considered pulp entertainment and nothing more...NO it says NOTHING about being female...

It says a lot actually, because when they were pulp, females were more than happy to join those who just called the fan losers.

Voices in your head don't count ok? We have to talk about objective reality, and if people are giving themselves complexes by soaking themselves in so much feminist dogma that they see sexism around every corner and end up fearful of everything, thats their problem, and its a problem with their outlook, not with reality.

are you a women who has experiences sexism at one point in her life?

sexism in the geek comunity exsits, this false hysteria over "fake geek girls" is just one form, being treated as eather invisible or like crap in those spaces (like comics/games shops) is another

Sexism exists period, much of it existing in feminist circles these days. When feminists make accusations and smears which are baseless against entire groups, its exactly that, sexism. This need to believe that hoards of geeks are sexist is laughable. If anything many are just desperate for female attention that they are the first to be the white knights, saving every internet damsel they can.

There is no false hysteria over geek girls, the fakes exist, and are prevalent. Women exploiting their sexuality is not a new thing, ever notice how many views young women get on youtube? Hell for quite a while there were almost content free response "response" videos by attractive girls who made a business of abusing and exploiting this aspect of female sexuality. Youtube had to crack down on it to the point where they removed response videos last I checked. But it still happens, have a pretty girl and it draws views like flies, no matter the content. Its why you have the token pretty face on so many gaming channels. Hell its why you have booth babes, because thats how you get male attention. The difference is that those are at least honest interactions.

And well, its not hysteria when your most prominent "feminist" in gaming, anita sarkeesian is found to be a blatant fake gamer.


In fact in related news 4chan recently explained "tits or gtfo"
http://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/20wd4d/4chan_explains_tits_or_gtfo/
And its relevant because its an acknowledgement of the truth, on the internet people are anonymous. Only your ideas matter. So generally when gender is brought up, its a demand for special treatment, an exploitation of gender.

No one knows you are girl reading a comic book, no one knows if you are girl ordering a comic book from amazon. How fragile are you claiming women are anyways?

youre doing it again

I'm having that thing again, oh yea, holding women up to standards of normal responsible people with agency.... how terrible, we must infantalize women...yes.

Again, if women are that fragile, are they really equal?
Again implicit in your argument is the idea of female weakness. Its an idea you continuously promote whether you know it or not.

I am not saying this

you know I am not saying this

from what I can gather you have toruble understanding that its not ok to act like a dick, ESPECIALLY if youre running a buisness

talk to any women who likes geeky things, ask her how she feels, I bet she might feel rather pissed off...especially at this kind of thing

Your feelings are not relevant to business. Your feelings do not necessary represent any reality. Your "feelings" don't stop you from buying a comic book off the internet or creating your own. Honestly I don't care how you feel, and no one else should, either you have the courage to persue your goals or you do not. Do you even know the definition of that term? We respect people for over coming adversity, not for wallowing in self pity like feminists seem to encourage for women. So again, feminists seem to be the worst enemies of women these days.

Beyond that again this is just another one of those smears, all those comic store owners must be vicious sexists, yea that's the ticket, and that's the only possible explanation for why women weren't interested in comics...
Oh wait, women in japan buy comic books written by other women just fine, and under a far more patriarchal society than the west. The difference being this, they actually bothered creating content which appealed to themselves rather than spend their time feeling sorry for themselves. Fancy that!!

And of course its been many years since anyone has really had to step foot inside a comic book store. cuz you know...internet.

you talk about fragility and yet are quick to paint everything as some kind of personal attack...

I didn't say that....I said it happens, thankfully my local comic books stores have all been great, others aren't so luckey

I guess the difference must be explained to you. Your smear of comic book owners is unjust. Did I say that comic book owners shriveled up, closed their stores and never got out of bed again because they were so wounded? Nope. But an unjust smear is an unjust smear, and when groups like feminists rely on this tactic, it has to be called out. Fragility on the other hand does apply to feminists depiction of women. Whereas the comic book store owner just is disgusted by your smear, the fictional woman who is too fearful to even go to a comic book store is encouraged to be a broken person, a powerless victim. So when feminists prattle on about strong independent women on one hand, they undermine it by implying that women are so weak they can't face a comic book store owner. And lets be honest, a fictional comic book store owner.... because since public feminists tend to be useless people, they don't have any knowledge of running a business, so they wouldn't know that a comic book store owner is someone who is always on the look out on how to make another sale. Trying to drive away customers is the last thing a business owner is interested in.

Anyways it goes back to feminists lack of integrity in argument. comic book store owners are sexist? Prove it. Love to see what % of them wouldn't take a girls money.

Great, so now you are damned regardless, its funny how that works

only if you don't underastand the difference between pedastooling and treating somone as eaqual,it shouldnt be a big deal if a girl has certain interests

Its just a matter of it being a contradiction with your idea that all these geeks hate women. Pedastooling is placing excess value on such people. So basically no you are having it both ways, comic book stores run by girl hating nerds, and comic book nerds pedstooling women everywhere. It starts to reveal your arguments depiction of reality for the cartoon it is.

While its true no one should pedastool anyone, the fact is that it contradicts your claims of men trying to keep women out of such interests, or being jerks to keep them out. "pedastooling" means they seek the approval of such women, quite the opposite of trying to exclude them

they are not mutually exclusive....

Its a complication of the feminist smear that these places are filled with women haters, and it only stretches credulity even thinner over their depiction off reality.

Its just evidence of trying to damn men regardless.

you really need to stop reading everything as an attack against "teh menz"

When unjust smears are made without a second thought against men because feminism has so normalized this unthinking type of attack, it will be called out. There is no reading anything into it, its only shocking to anyone that its so rarely called out, which is in itself evidence of us living in a society which is quite the opposite of what feminists claim. When these are your pervasive norms, and thats what you can get away with, misandry rules the day.

no most comics were not the result of massive marketing sprees like you see with blockbuster films. Most organically grew from humble beginnings, and a great many have failed, no matter how much marketing was behind them.

EVERYTHING no matter how small is "marketed" way back when Solder comics had tough and cool solders to appeal to boys, girl comics used cute things and pastels to appeal to girls, everything right down to the gum you buy is "marketed" in some way

also somtimes companies are dumb in regards to demographics...just look at jims countless videos on the game industry and why COD shooters arent the only games that exist

No, early media grows organically. And there has to be interest, you can't market a dud into long term success. Basically you are still trying to claim that people are just "tricked" into hobbies and interests. Anyways thats historical, and today? There is no excuse, with crowd funding and the internet, nothing stops "feminists" from creating their own media. Its only the market and their own lack of belief in the words they say that stop them. Its why feminists like anita sarkeesian can raise 160k to create some extremely dishonest videos about video games where she is so lazy or incompetent she has to steal footage from other youtubers. If that can be funded, there is no excuse for a woman not to be able to succeed at creating content, assuming the market claimed exists at all. There is nothing to stop your theoretical feminist creators from creating the content you demand, and making mind blowing amounts of money.

It doesn't matter how many dumb games are out there, more are made and people gamble to win because the male market demand is proven to exist.

And frankly that's what your feminist conspiracy theory has to assume, that people hate money

now weve gone from logical gymnastics to logical contortionism...jesus christ

No its logical call out. You claim an unserved market exist, well you just found your gold mine, something to retire on. Go out find these women and create what appeals to you, and if you actually believe what you say, and the market exists, you will be rich beyond imagination.

But you see women sit on their hands just complaining... I wonder why that is?....

Funny thing, the rationalization hamster is a thing for feminists...

no its some bullshit Redpillers made up

Its a analogy red pillers created to explain feminist thought process and behaivor, and well, sadly it applies.

But anyways what I said was correct and is implicit in your argument.

I am not saying women are weak...you are puting words in my mouth

I don't have to, its implicit in your argument.

Its accurate and you are just in denial.

quoting fucked up but whatever you meant "you are in denial" is not an argument

The denial wasn't the argument, just pointing our you ignored the argument in the first place.
Need I remind you of your "argument"? "thats bullshit and you know it" not clipped or shorted in any way, that was quite literally all you had.

That's fine, and its fine that I've never heard of it, it caters to its own audience, and it shouldn't be forced to cater for others, let alone people with no actual interest, like me. You say its very diverse, but well, I've not heard of it, so its not that diverse at all.

ummm....no its still diverse....regardless of how popular it may or may not be,

And missing the point, demanding that everything fit your tastes is not diverse.
You see, here's the difference I don't complain about Saga, or claim it needs to fit my tastes, feminists on the other hand go around claiming everything else needs to be censored to fit theirs.

Not everything has to be the same, and not everything has to appeal to everyone

which is not what I am saying, when looking at weather or not something could stand to represent certain groups better we have to ask why and how? complaing about lack of female charachters in shaw shank redemption is pointless

That is exactly what you are saying when you attack other media for not fitting your personal taste. Not only attacking the media, but the audience and the creators with generalized smears. But yes, even feminists couldn't pull off an attack on shawshank with a straight face. But they do in every other area, and since they cannot acknowledge any possible difference in interest which would prevent a viable market from existing, they have to explain every failure through sexist conspiracy theory.

Again, this is your assumption. Like the church lady who finds dungeons and dragons satanic and morally corrupting, this is a matter of your personal opinion which you choose to universalize based on nothing at all.

while theres an element of subjectivity I could provide some reasons why the way certain charachters are treated might be considered problematic

It doesn't matter if you find them problematic. No different than how a church lady finds dungeons and dragons and harry potter satanic.

Really? Is that your argument? I might as well say that since forest gump had broad appeal all films must be like that from now on. Its not a serious argument at all.

my argument is in some cases it is not the worst fucking thing in the world and can add to a work, is it aplicable to all works? no, but that should go without saying

Again, why must you force yourself on other peoples work. It implies your gender lacks the ability to create their own work. Its not a good mentality to have. And it is the worst thing in the world, it stops being about art at that point, it starts being about proaganda.

Notable how there is no argument.

Notable how you spend your time clipping out most of what I say in my quotes because otherwise you can't respond at all.

The truth is society is based around male expendability, but that's another discussion.

Fact is you can look at the statistics all you want on things like education, its clearly a system made for women at this point.

see I purposfully didn't explain why because by this point I'm getting tired, but essentialy in entertainment men are always the default and women considered "other"

Quite the opposite. Women are always the smart one barely tolerating the dumb f*** of a husband in every other tv comedy out there. The default? The default to be picked on, the default to be expendable. You see feminists type up pages of rage when a character on game of thrones gets raped, but hundreds of men die? No big deal.

Default is female, and we live in a gynocentric society. Its why breast cancer is receives such disproportionate attention and funding.

Just look at this from maher, which was so many years ago...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmRDUcbx9tw
But remains true. Society is organized around "making women nod". And so when anyone dares to argue with feminists these days, they act surprised, unable to even comprehend why anyone would dare disagree with them.

Again, no valid argument because you simply can't respond. The broken idea of "objectification" is just the perfect example of the intellectual emptiness which is modern feminism.

objectification is the idea of veiwing women as sexual objects with no purpose other than to be obtained...she is passive, not the one calling the shots in regards to her own sexuality

Nope, objectification is thrown out everytime a man finds something attractive. Is lara croft passive? Nope, but men would want to attain her because she's attractive, therefore objectification. Like it or not a term is defined by its general use, and feminists have used it as a generalized tool for condemning mens sexuality. Anything dealing with womens attractiveness is "objectification" by feminist standards. Its just a fact, and why its a broken concept, and evidence of the lazy type of thought that is pervasive and fundamental to the feminist movement these days.

Anyways you are self contradictory. Sexual display is not "passive".

You've seen nothing, you can cherry pick whatever you want to prove whatever case you want, but it won't be valid. At this point its as I said, you are claiming that because vogue magazine appeals to mostly women, hires mostly women, it and all the fans must be rabid sexists, because the only reason men don't read vogue is because women make them feel unwelcome. Yea thats the ticket.

You know..the only reason women don't watch the WNBA is because of the menz right?

Grown adult women just don't have the backbone to just watch the entertainment they want, these are major life decisions and just anything can disuade them!!

Btw good job mangling the quote system so much that it was a pain for me to fix.

Perhaps you were trying to reinforce gender stereotypes on technology

they do actually

So whats the problem, either they choose to watch what you don't approve or things which don't fit your agenda, or you are saying they don't have the backbone to even make something as simple as their own entertainment choices.

And good job mangling posts quotes again

 

[Mau95]

Well there are differences. They're just not really that important.

 

[parenthephobia]

It is to the point now that we believe so strongly that global warming is happening, that any claim to the contrary is immediately rejected, regardless of its evidence (or lack thereof).

Claims to the contrary are rejected because there is currently no sceptical theory of climate which is compatible with the evidence.

It's only FOX News which spins a paper that suggests that 1% of the current evidence in favour of global warming is being misinterpreted into "scientists have proven global warming isn't happening".

Say you go into a room. The walls are red, shiny, and wet. You can smell paint in the air. A man is standing in the room holding a paintbrush with red-stained bristles. His hands and his overalls are covered in splotches of red. Next to him is a step ladder with an open can of red paint on it.

The reasonable conclusion is that the room has been recently painted by the man. A claim that the room just turned red by itself and the man had nothing to do with it would be met with some degree of scepticism.

Consider this: if there really were measurable differences between, say, the average intelligence of black people and white people, would that research every truly come to light?

Yes.

If someone tried to publish a finding like that in a paper or journal, they would immediately be called a racist, dozens of other papers would show up explaining how their methods were wrong or evidence was confounded, etc because

As a rule, newpapers are not where real scientific research is published.

In journals, where it is, this doesn't tend to happen. Papers about differences between "races" are published from time-to-time, and people do not get terribly upset. This may partly be because these papers don't conclude that "therefore racism is scientifically justified", but instead say things like:

"Our evidence suggests that Africans have lower brain mass on average than Europeans and that if the work of Bob Bobson et al. on the correlation between brain mass and intelligence turns out to be correct, Africans may have lower intelligence, on average. However, as this difference would be at least order of magnitude less significant than the natural variation between individuals, race would continue be an unreliable predictor of the intelligence of individuals."

It is hard to imagine that evidence could come to light that proved that e.g. the majority of Africans are less intelligent than the majority of Europeans. It would mean that almost all previous research in the area was based on bad data or the incorrect interpretation of that data. Generally, that kind of evidence isn't found in any field.

Usually, evidence refines a theory, or extends it to apply in new situations, rather than totally negating a theory.

we believe so strongly as a society that there are no racial differences

Would that it were.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

There are differences and what they mean by differences aren't inferiority.

 

[Olas]

No. He's full of it. Science is a process. Processes are inanimate, insubstantial, incorporeal, abstract concepts. They don't have whims, because they don't have neurological systems, let alone brains capable of conscious thought.

Thinking, conscious creatures (i.e. people) have whims. That means what people think science means may be wrong and beholden to public whims, but science itself is just science.

Whether the process of science itself is objective is irrelevant, because it's always going to be carried out by and for communities of people who will always be biased.

Say "Who may potentially be biased," and you're speaking the truth. Say, "who will always be biased," and you're spread false, needless, and irrational misinformation.

A lot of adjectives there; is there a type of misinformation that isn't false?

No, I fundamentally disagree, everyone and every group will always have a bias.

I'm not really interested in if you agree or not. Since we're talking about science, the onus is on you to back up your claims with evidence. Which claims, you ask? Why, these right here:

Denying that is denying how human beings work. Now people may try to suppress their bias as much as possible, and in some decisions where the options are fairly limited the bias may be suppressible so that it has no impact on the final decision made. But when making decisions as complex as what to research, how to carry out the research, and how to organize and present the findings, there is no way to remove bias even a considerable amount, and I'd raise the question of whether it's even a good idea to try.

Citation needed.

If you're going to raise the bar and start insisting that I back up everything I say with sources, you could at least start by doing the same yourself. I don't see why the onus is specifically on me. Considering just how much more extreme your claim is, that humans can operate (in complicated fields no less) without bias, I would think the onus would fall on you to support that assertion rather than asking me to support what is generally considered common knowledge.

However, if it helps us get past this quicker I'll play ball. For starters, here's a list of well known cognitive biases.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

To be fair, being aware of a bias makes one much more likely to avoid it, and scientists are likely more aware of cognitive biases than your average person, especially if they work in fields related to psychology (I would imagine). However, expecting even the most knowledgeable, level headed person to be free from all these biases all the time is just ludicrous.

For a specific example of a scientist exhibiting a bias, I'll use the most well known scientist of all time Albert Einstein[footnote]Keep in mind I'm using Einstein because he's well known, not because I think his well known intellect makes him more reputable than your average scientist.[/footnote]. Einstein was enormously skeptical of quantum theory until his dying day, even after it had reached near universal acceptance and recognition within the scientific community. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he was almost insistent that the universe could not be fundamentally in-deterministic. His irrational insistence of a deterministic universe that acted the way that made the most sense to him was ultimately a scar on his legacy.

Now, if we're done debating this well established fact of human nature, perhaps we can turn our attention to the question of whether it's even possible for any form of academia to operate without subjectivity. Considering he fact that a field of study needs to have a certain degree of interest in order to even get started, I would say no. Can you think of a a non-arbitrary method of selecting experiments that somehow bypasses the personal choice by any human being? Keep in mind this is only the very start of an investigation.

Even under the assumption that the process itself is carried out in a purely mechanical fashion without bias towards results, the decision of what to investigate and research has to be based on something.

That's true. What you're leaving out is that the decision of what to investigate and research is being made by millions of separate, independent researchers around the world with no uniform governing body dictating what they can or can't research.

And why would that matter? You think that somehow human bias disappears because of how the researches are organized, or aren't?

No, and I never said that. If you want to know what I think, kindly ask rather than baselessly speculating thanks.

As for what I think, and this is fairly clearly borne out by my own experience with research, is that it's not that bias magically disappears when researchers aren't organized, but rather there is no uniform bias. Researchers come from across the human spectrum, and so their biases aren't all neatly aligned. When researchers do act on their biases (which I will not accept that this is as inevitable as you claim until you pony up evidence) there's no guarantee nor even a rational reason to expect that all the researchers around the world all have biases for or against the same thing. From my experience, in the big picture the biases tend to cancel each other out.

So I'm supposed to believe that all biases among scientists within the scientific community are evenly distributed and in perfect balance? That seems improbable to put it mildly. While I agree that the scientific community crosses the human spectrum, that doesn't mean that every idea or mindset is equally represented (which is probably a good thing, I imagine we can agree not all ideas are equal, although our stances on them are inherently subjective).

Yes, let's never speculate about anything being possible unless we already have concrete evidence that it is already true, that seems like a very logical and open minded way to go about analyzing things.

Tut tut, don't pout just because you got called out.

Called out for what?

The fact is that anyone who wants to claim that the scientific process isn't being followed correctly, if they want to be taken seriously by scientists, owes it to their audience to make their claim using the scientific method.
The scientific method goes: [observation] -> [hypothesis] -> [experiment] -> [analysis] -> [peer review] -> [theory]

If you don't even have an observation of research articles being censored ideologically by the scientific community as a whole, then you've got nothing. And you're wasting everyone's time with idle speculation and conspiracy-theory jibbajabba.

Are you being serious? Since when did this theoretical discussion turn into scientific investigation? Just because we're talking ABOUT science (scientists actually), does not mean we need to use scientific empiricism in the actual discussion. Besides, I was never claiming anything in particular about the scientific community, I was simply making the rational observation that if the scientific community were to be suppressing anything, it would be through choosing not to research it in the first place, not through deliberate tampering with an actual experiment.

Your insistence that I need to have an observation before speculating on anything flies directly in the face of what these forums are about. People bring up theoretical discussions all the time: what if aliens visited earth, what if you could be president for a day, what if you were stuck on an island with Jerry Springer. There's no reason we should have to prove these scenarios are actually true before discussing them rationally. If you don't like it, don't use the forums.

Are we done?

 

[Terria Mountain]

When given the option to believe in their own inherent superiority or capability, people tend to become lazy, complacent and self obsessed.

If you're looking for a more productive and faster advancing world, you shouldn't encourage that.

The sports world has plenty of examples of arrogant athletes convinced of their own exceptional talent producing poor or below average performances. The same will by true in any other environment if you give most people an excuse to rest on their laurels or be self-indulgent.

I'm confident all of the commonly regarded geniuses in the world got things wrong. Sometimes maybe basic things. They're not stupid because they got a lot of challenging things right, but they'll start getting a lot more wrong if encouraged to stop double checking the validity of their work because they believe that they are naturally too intelligent to make the type of mistakes a branded-inferior person might make.

I believe encouraging everyone to be enthusiastic about learning a subject and looking for mistakes as a pathway to exploring it further; rather than treating every mistake made as evidence of inferiority from it's beginning; will bring more benefits.

What's the real practical use of meticulously compartmentalising people into categories? Every next stage of research just leads to further sub-division of categories, which eventually leads straight back to individual assessment anyway (exactly what we're trying to get away from). Categories with broader set limits will always lack some detail that is important to the selector (assuming the purpose of these categories is to optimise a candidate selection process), so you may as well assess individually on your chosen criteria instead.

If the purpose of this research is to unlock the key biological attributes that aid performance at something (a bit sci-fi, but say because you want to genetically engineer humans with similar abilities), you don't really need to focus on gender or race. You need to look for people with that particular skill-set and then establish as many commonalities between them as you can. Considering how physically different two people of the same race and gender can be; coupled with the variety of racial backgrounds in most people's long term ancestry, race or gender aren't likely to account for much.