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Are men smarter than women? (merged)

fizzygirl

the link you posted above is one fantastic thread.

min posted >>

vAccording to someone in the know, men's IQ curves are broader than that of women. Translation? There are more intelligent men than intelligent women, but there are also more low-intelligence men than low-intelligence women. Women's IQ curve is steeper and more centralized.

expressed differently i believe the SD ( standard deviation ) of IQ is higher for male than female. note that IQ tests are already calibrated so that the mean is the same for both ( a corollary to this is that we don't know males are not on average smarter to begin with -- the link to the Taiwanese study i posted would tend to indicate they are ).

if this is true it means a male with an IQ 3 SD's above the mean would have a very difficult time finding a g/f of equal intellect.
 
xtcxtc said:
PK Women are not smarter than men in general, nor are men smarter than women, the fact that some areas are more highly represented by men and others women comes down to way more complex issues than merely “oh they’re smarter” and it’s impractical to believe that just because the numbers of women playing chess at that level are lower than men that it has any bearing on the intelligence of the general populus.

populace --- but i mentioned nobel prizes, bridge and backgammon. also you don't find many female CEO's of fortune 500 cos. nor many self made millionaires. btw i know many male millionaires but zero female excluding those i have given the money to.

at the highest levels women are not competitive with men.
Click to expand...

My point is that it's not due to intelligence - the factors bearing on why there are more men in those areas are so wide and varied, you can not simply say it is so because men are smarter.

I also know many millionaires and have found that a much higher percentage of self made fortunes belong to females in their late twenties, and you can't mention fortune 500 companies without realising that even today, many companies are still of the "old boys club" and have a token female or two on the board to comply with regulations. The glass ceiling so to speak is not as evident today as it was ten years ago but it’s still there in many ways; this does not make women any less intelligent than men, it just makes the climb a little harder and therefore the desire has to be stronger.

But having money or being a CEO of a fortune 500 company doesn’t make you intelligent. Surely you must have some smarts to get there... then again, as I mentioned before: if you have enough desire to do something you’ll get there. There are many pursuits where women far outweigh the men in the success department.

I will always stand by the fact that you can have anything you want if you desire it enough. Intelligence, whilst handy is nothing without the motivation to use it.

A Nobel Prize, playing chess, bridge or backgammon, becoming a CEO of a fortune 500 company, although all worthwhile pursuits, are not anything I would aspire to; I have no doubt that if I put my mind to it I could achieve it and I’m sure many of my testing psychologists expected it ;) but the fact remains that unless it held any interest for me I would not be able to motivate myself to bring about that result.

Nothing that has been mentioned shows a mark of intelligence, it requires a high level of knowledge in a particular field but it does not require intelligence. Achieving the status of a world renowned expert in your field does not mean you are intelligent; men and women are found to have different value systems is if fair to say that women are nicer than men? Of course it isn’t.

A blanket statement that says men are smarter than women and qualifies itself with further assertions that become shaky at best when expanding viewpoints isn’t going to convince anyone.

If you prefer to view the world through the narrow window where those assertions are reality then perhaps yes we can make such a declaration... but factor in values, motivations, socioeconomic dynamics, availability of information and any of a million other possible influences and that statement and any reasoning that accompanies it is blown out of the water.
If you say that you believe intelligence is inherent and more prevalent in men, why do you measure that intelligence by achievements that all the other factors have a part in shaping? These benchmarks that you use to measure intelligence against aren’t exactly a large cross-section; you’ve picked male dominated fields and said that they are a standard for intelligence when intelligence itself has never been clearly defined.

Men are different to women - certainly, more inclined to be motivated towards tactical games and power - most likely, but born with more intelligence? It's highly doubtful.
 
i meet so few smart people.
i meet people with high paying jobs,
i meet people with impressive education,
i meet women with authority,
i meet men with power.
i meet people who have everthing you think they could want, yet i meet so very few smart people.
across all walks of life and in all age groups most people are dumb. present company excluded.
most of the clever people i meet are men, but i meet many more men than women, so i couldnt judge by sex.
further i think my assessment of others "smarts" could be blurred by the clause birds of a feather flock together, if you know what i mean.
 
I've been told a few times that men have a wider variance, ie. that there are smarter men than any woman and there are less intelligent men than any women, but women on average have a slightly higher IQ.

I think it's all bullshit though, I've never seen any proof of it whatsoever. I'd guess we all have the same potential.

On a side note, I think IQ tests are crap, I have a high IQ according to tests, but I'm crap at alot of things.
All IQ tests show is how good you are at doing IQ tests.
 
PsychoKitten

A Nobel Prize, playing chess, bridge or backgammon, becoming a CEO of a fortune 500 company, although all worthwhile pursuits, are not anything I would aspire to; I have no doubt that if I put my mind to it I could achieve it and I’m sure many of my testing psychologists expected it but the fact remains that unless it held any interest for me I would not be able to motivate myself to bring about that result.

my, you do have a high opinion of yourself don't you ??

the rest of your post deals with the usual excuses from the nature / nurture debate and throws in "the glass ceiling" for good measure.

however the facts are not only are men smarter than women ( a claim i have NOT made in my earlier postings ) but they have a higher SD as well. did you click on the link to the Taiwanese study i posted earlier.

just to fling in a bit more evidence men have a bigger brain size ( on average ) than women and that also correlates with IQ.
 
Based on our current western definition of intelligence, which is largely math and science based, I would definitely say that men are smarter. And goddamn, it pisses me off. :(

Now, if you are talking about empathy, or verbal/linguistic skill, women are way, way ahead of men.
 
Re: PsychoKitten

xtcxtc said:
my, you do have a high opinion of yourself don't you ??
Click to expand...

not particularly, you didn't note the winky face at all did you... I'm sure emoticons are there for a reason... I was less sick I'd bother debating more but I don't have the energy nor the inclination.
 
not particularly, you didn't note the winky face at all did you...

of course i did but it didn't paste across --- also the emoticon doesn't invalidate the original statement.

great book on a slightly different subject but with a lot on correlation with brain size on IQ >

Race, evolution and behaviour by j. phillippe rushton.

a counter argument beloved by liberals >

guns, germs and steel by jared diamond.

a great read that makes an argument for geography leading to caucasions "ruling" the planet but his whole case is flawed by the fact he does not mention IQ at all. ( note that same would correlate highly with IQ --- a theory i had developed long before i read anything on the subject ).
 
what about whites being smarter than blacks or mexicans??
cuz i know thats true, and im not being racist either.
but id have to say the smartest race is chinese or japanese(its one of those countries).
Click to expand...

This is down to differences in the education system and work ethic.

My step children are half-Japanese, the oldest received some Japanese education (3 years old), the maths he learnt at that age is about equivilant to what he is being taught now at age 7 in the UK.

His younger brother was too young to go to the Japanese school, his maths skills are the same as the rest of his class. Whereas the older one has just received a maths award.

Japanese education favors maths at younger ages because learning to write is so much more involved than working with numbers.

This would be meaningless of course, but good maths skills make good accountants, good accounting makes good businesses.

Jason
 
tally-ho said:
I seem to remember hearing that boys get their intelligence from their mothers and girls get their nature from their fathers. if so, how does that figure in the boys are smarter than girls equation? [/QUOTE

Not meaning to offend, but that is total bullshit... characteristics are random and based on different combinations of dominant and recessive genes...
Click to expand...
 
It all depends on the definition of "intelligence".

We're all better at different things. I don't really care what group is better at what and by how much.
 
I like how xtcxtc failed to respond to my comments about men greatly lacking in empathy and verbal/linguistic ability.
 
Wether or not men are born with a more intelligent nature is besides the point. What does it matter without the end result? For example, children (BOTH BOYS AND GIRLS) that recieve good educations in China and India, are more likely to succeed than those in America. This is due to their society's strong work ethic and value of one's education. Like PsychoKitten said, Drive + Intelligence is what is needed. And I seem to think the first is of the most importance.

If we must discuss which sex is "smarter" the Scrippts Howard National Spelling Bee is a good testament to children that are both intelligent and have incredible drives to succeed. The boy to girl ratio in this competition is almost always close to equal. This year, the girls have it by one:
Male 125 Female 126
In the past 76 years there have been 42 female champions and 34 male champions. And most of these championships took place during a time when it wasnt' exactly "acceptable" in the society for women to win such competitions. Thus, not long ago, women did not eagerly enter the bees.

On the other hand, if one were to dive into the World Chess Championships, it is obvious that males are notorious for winning. Only a handful of women have won world chess titles.
However, it is obvious that these two competitions use very different types of brainpower.

These isolated examples are just to aid in my point that I feel when we get down to it men are apt to succeed in certain areas and the same goes for women. It is true that our genetic make-up is different but I find that it is people of little intelligence that presume one sex has to be smarter than the other. It is a matter of difference; not better than.
 
Re: PsychoKitten

just to fling in a bit more evidence men have a bigger brain size ( on average ) than women and that also correlates with IQ. [/B]
Click to expand...

This does not correlate with IQ.. we only use about 10-15% of our brain. People get smarter by learning how to use more of it. Not by the sheer mass of it.
 
men are more intelligent, they don't hesitate a second when the president orders "go kill".
anyway, whatever definition we decide to give to "intelligence", i think they are other qualities more important than intelligence, such as compassion.
i give more value to the life of an average but nice person than to a selfish genius.
 
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