[0596] 97 Points
└ posted on Monday, 7 July 2014, by Novil
On Sunday, 6 June 2014, I posted the submissions between place 13 and 25 of the Sandra and Woo and Gaia fanart contest 2014. Go check them out!
- Title: The Human Brain: IQ (3)
- Footnote: Ian J. Deary et al. [2007]
- Biology teacher: This graph shows that the distribution of IQ in men has a larger variance than in women. This means that there are significantly more very intelligent men than women.
- Biology teacher: On the other hand this also means… Oh no, it’s the moral police!
- Dorothy Cambridge: GET HIM!
- Teacher: Tell my wife and children that I love them!
- Male activist: 97 points on the privilege-o-meter!
- Female activist: High time to cull him from the herd!
- Principal: Please welcome your new biology teacher, Mrs. Dorothy Um… Cambridge!
- Dorothy Cambridge: Margaret Cavendish! Laura Bassi! Caroline Herschel! Elizabeth Báthory! Ada Lovelace! Marie Curie! Lise Meitner! Emmy Noether! Dorothy Hodgkin! Rosalind Franklin! Ada Yonath!
- Sandra: This will not end well.
![[0596] 97 Points](/comics/2014-07-07-0596-97-points.png "[0596] 97 Points")
I think there is a minor mistake in the understanding of the IQ-test. It’s not that people just happen to fit into the curve.
The pointing is designed and re-measured every year so that people will fall into the curve.
They hand out the new years test to 1000 people without any grading/point system in place. Then they define point measurements till it fits the curve they want (with 95% being in the 30 points wide “normal” range).
If any area shows too much deviation between genders, they actually throw it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ#Sex
If I know this comic well at all, I suspect they will be making fun of both sides by the end of this.
@ Ostriche:
Bingo, you get it.
@ Paeris Kiran:
There are four major factors that cause female behavior to be different than male behavior.
1. Women can get pregnant… and without laws to require the father to also be responsible, they bear the burden in a more physical sense than men do.
2. Its harder for women to obtain muscle mass, so unless one exerts effort, they are smaller and weaker than a large population group… this is perhaps why women are characterized in being passive aggressive… but then consider how men react to other men that are bigger than them and the behavior is similar.
3. Social pressure on women is different than social pressure on men, but this also means a large portion of the reason why there are less women in sciences is completely due to how they grew up, so its not really gender specific.
4. Men are socialized to treat women kindly, hence they get away with a lot more annoying habbits and speeding tickets then men do. Again this is just social conditioning.
If say we were to raise our children without socializing them by gender, then the only major differences would be #1. (I consider #2 as moot as men are becoming more passive aggressive due to office job environments anyhow.)
Great – Larry Summers, rehashed.
The point is *not* about the science. The point is how the results are used by real people.
And unfortunately, toss the old “IQ has a higher standard deviation in men than women” out there, and I will guarantee that how the outcome in many people’s minds are “women are stupider” and “women can’t do science”.
Since the human brain inevitably generalizes, it means that when you trumpet that “The mean of distribution X is higher than the mean of distribution Y”, it *will* be interpreted as “ALL X are higher than ALL Y”.
If you’re not prepared to have your comments misinterpreted, and if you are not prepared to be held responsible for the damage that those misinterpretations will cause, then keep them to oneself, or to a community that is not anxious to have “science proves we’re right – all those women in science are fakes”.
Taking the comic far too seriously, there’s no doubt that a teacher spouting these statistics would have seriously damaged the academic self-perception of the girls, and the ability of the boys to accept achievement by the girls. After all, a trusted authority has just told them that women aren’t that smart.
“Wait, that’s not what he said!”
No, but that’s what almost every one of those students heard. And what they heard is what counts.
Luke wrote:
Secular humanists support equal rights for everyone (well, generally; as with any grouping, there will always be a few people who claim it without practicing it properly).
My big beefs are that there are quite a few feminist groups that care nothing about equality, but are instead simply female supremacists, and that even of the ones that do want equality, very many of them are extremely short-sighted and unscientific, focusing entirely on the privileges that men enjoy and problems women face while ignoring the privileges that women enjoy and the problems that men face, while also making some extremely unsound studies (I recall at least one major feminist study where the study’s author conducted a survey of college women which included asking them if they felt they had ever been raped, and then ignored that response and categorized the vast majority of them as rape victims using an unorthodox and overly broad definition of rape).
doombybbr wrote:
That’s probably what he was about to say before they burst in…
doombybbr wrote:
Pfft, hardly. Remember Aristotle’s writings on physics and astronomy? The ones that were almost universally wrong? They were the result of logic, too. Logic will often steer you wrong if you are not making painstaking efforts to ensure that your assumptions are correct and that you are not committing logical fallacies.
@ Woden:
That’s not really what secular humanism is. It’s about rejecting religion and superstition as a basis for morality and ethics, and promoting reason. It’s a philosophy, where feminism is a political movement.
Lately feminism has started to take on a philosophical component, where belief in equality of the sexes is all that’s needed to make one a feminist, but IMO this is more about a) normalizing “being a feminist” so that it’s understood that many different women and men are feminists, and b) introducing people slowly to the concept of feminism, so that they can then move on to speaking out against gender essentialism (which is one of those things feminism fights hard against, and yet is accused of not caring about), unequal pay, misogynist jokes, etc. etc.
Valkeiper2012 wrote:
I hate it when people use this term, because they almost always use it incorrectly. “The exception proves the rule” does not paradoxically mean that an exception shows that the rule is true; this should be obviously incorrect to anyone who thinks about it. Instead, it is using an archaic meaning of “prove” which is synonymous with “test”; it would be equivalent to calling a trial a “proving”.
tl;dr version: “The exception proves the rule” means that the exception is calling the rule into question, not supporting it.
When will people realize that shifting the balance to the other side only results in more imbalance?
@ Luke:
Yeah, that’s basically what feminism is. The advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. Men fight for equality, women fight for equality, non-binary individuals fight for equality. That feminists seem to be primarily women to you only means that you don’t know very many men who are interested in equality.
@ Scrutinizer:
If so, it’s a bit awkward that this extreme tumbblr feminism is reaching into a school and kicking someone out to replace them with the tumbblr version. Definitely implies the more mainstream PC movement is raving tyrannical crazies.
This strip and the one where Harriet went nuts both has one particular problem, while it’s obvious that Novil is criticizing something, it’s a bit ambiguous who are included among the criticized. In this strip, are only extreme feminists being criticized or is it feminists in general?
Anyway, for those who think feminism is a strange name if you’re after equality, I must point out that there are a lot of cases where man is considered the norm. Consider words like human and mankind. Heck, often man is used in place of human. Those words are used to describe a group which included both genders. At the same time, anyone using the word “womankind” would be describing only women.
Further, imagine four politicians discussing/debating with each other being aired on TV. If all four are men, it causes few reactions, but if all four are women, it will seem strange.
If we can use the word man to refer to both men and women, then as far as I’m concerned, people who want equality between genders can use the word feminism. It’s also fitting because often the point is to get women into areas that are dominated by men. That said, if you want to get more men into position dominated by women, like taking care of children in a kindergarten, feel free to call that masculinism.
@ doombybbr:
Actually, the statistic being referred to is, while there are more intellectual outliers that are male, females are more intelligent on average.
Marscaleb wrote:
Sadly, reality is like a tug-of-war game. You want equality? Then you need a side that is pulling their darndest, and aren’t all that concerned that things end up in exactly the middle. I’m not an extremest myself, but I can’t help but observe that every correction of a major social injustice, from slavery to the women’s sufferage came because of the efforts of the “extremists”.
So, no, society wouldn’t be better off if all those (mostly mythical) feminist extremists where middle-of-the-road do-nothings like me.
Gender inequality does not only effect women…
when i was in school we had extre optional courses in various fields people could opt for..
and one was riding which i applied for but dident stand a chanse of getting shince they heavily favoured girls…
frankly i think that wrong as hell!
Gender discrimination is a two way street though admitedly it often effects women more…
what would make more sense is to make it a legal requirment of married men to actually take out parental leave equal in lenght to that the women have to have.. that way there is no real distinquishing between the sexes..
it does raise the question of married vs unmarried employees though i suppose..
But if no one can have children there will be no customers and employees to employ or sell too :p
The problem is that most people don’t realize that feminists are not talking anymore of equal opportunity (i. e., same chances if you have *equal skill*, regardless of gender) but instead they talk of equality, i.e. same chances *independent of skill*, which is nothing else than discrimination. They simply argue, completely nonscientifically, that there is a correlation between sex and job, and because they are nutjobs, they deliberately interprete that correlation as causality and deliberately ignore the fact that many clever women are not so stupid to work (I mean, come on people, working is for losers ;)) but instead found a family.
@ Scrutinizer:
The assumption that men and women are equal is a nice, politically correct one to make, but that doesn’t make it true. Doesn’t make it UNtrue either, but we shouldn’t claim it is until we have proof one way or another.
Powree and Oliver Knorzer, I’m very disappointed in today’s comic. As a woman in computer science, I hear daily why people think I’m not suited for it, and it’s very tiring. People look at that chart and say “this is why we don’t hire women” or “this is why we discourage women from math”. It’s very upsetting. I’ve been hearing it all my life. Now you are making fun of something that has been real and difficult for me. Please do better in the future.
@ Avian Mosquito:
I spot read two random sentences out of your rant, and they were both wrong.
2 to 8 percent of rape cases are “unfounded”. Unfounded means not enough evidence to prosecute. The number of accusations that are actually false is lower.
Both men and women can be sexually harassed and raped. It was probably a man (bloated with manly bravado) who told you otherwise.
When you are ready to be correct, then we can discuss.
@ Paeris Kiran:
Truth is relative. Where is a centaur herd when you need one? 😉
@ wobster109:
Just image what this teacher would be like after one class of Larisa? ~evil cackling~
Helen wrote:
‘Significant’ has a certain meaning in math, which depends on the population tested, that no one told you 😉 The ‘Real Life Science’ ‘showing significant difference’ is cited on the blackboard as ‘Dreary et al. 2007’, maybe I should just google it 😉
@ Lightbulb:
The main reason the feminist movement stopped its slide into oblivion is the ultra-radicals went too far for the ‘rank-and-file’ women.
When the ‘ultras’ started ranting about “men are useless” and “all sex is rape”, and starting pushing for abortions from all pregnancies; the women who actually lived in the real world started leaving the movement (and NOW especially).
Thankfully, cooler heads are coming back into control of the movement. NOW and the other organizations serve a vital function; but they show NO group (including government) should have beyond a certain amount of power.
Despite all the trouble it creates, the concept of “division of powers” is one reason why democracy works for the US.
When they embraced democracy, none of the countries in eastern Europe separated the responsibilities and powers between the country’s government and the more immediate (local) governments. Because the ‘feds’ have over-riding power (unlike in the US), only one group has total power and that’s why the concept falls apart in eastern Europe.
I know there will be a bunch of people jumping at me and trying to prove the US ‘feds’ are too powerful. I agree. I also say they are NOT as powerful as they want to be or would be without the division of powers and responsibilities set forth in the constitution.
zerqtm wrote:
You should have seen the reaction when it was suggested 18 year olds of BOTH genders would have to register for the draft.
Seems the feminists of THAT time wanted all the perceived privileges, but none of the responsibilities or (as some people saw the draft) disadvantages.
Put forth that idea now (with the extreme feminists being pushed out) and I wonder how it would be viewed.
Woden wrote:
You were right to try and correct Valkeiper, the way he used “the exception to prove the rule” was horrible wrong. However, your correction is also wrong. “The exception that proves the rule” doesn’t mean what you claimed it to mean
“The Exception that Proves the Rule” means quite simply that if there is an exception then that proves that there is a rule. A very simple example is a sign saying “You can’t park here on sunday” which is the exception that proves that on every other day of the week the rule is: “You can park here”.
A more practical example would be “No Smoking Signs” prior to the smoking ban. No Smoking signs proved that you could smoke everywhere else. Those areas where the exception that proved the rule that you could smoke in public areas.
The fact that there is no law against doing X doesn’t necessarily mean that you can do X but if there is some kind of law which stipulates that you can’t do X under certain circumstances then it is save to assume that in all other cases you can do X.
This is an interesting Article about the proverb:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/731/whats-the-meaning-of-the-expression-thats-the-exception-that-proves-the-rule
It takes the writer a few tries to get it right though, so you should read it till the end.
@ wobster109:
I just want you to notice that “on the other hand” is a classic introduction of the antithesis in a thesis-antithesis argument. Since the thesis is “there are significantly more very intelligent men than women”, a logical antithesis would have been “on the other hand this also means that there are significantly more less intelligent men than women” (as other commenters already pointed out). So Sandra’s Biology teacher was actually preparing an argument against inherent male excellence. The way I perceive it, this comic tries to draw it’s humor from him being interrupted by an extreme female supremacist.
Also, a recent German study found IT to be the only field of work that had a higher average income for women than for men. Assuming this is based on qualification (likely, since total average showed an income gap of ~20%) it is actually probable you are better fit for the job than those questioning you, especially since you stuck to it against resistance.
Crestlinger wrote:
Add Sandra, then say “one of them, maybe two, let’s go for all three”.
wobster109 wrote:
Long story short noone want´s to expend resources to look for the capable woman… in mathematics because statisticaly to get same result it will require more resources expended than looking for men.
And you will never ever change that unless you rewrite human genetic code by active genetic engeniering or few dozen generations of careful eugenics.
Each individuals skillset is completly determined by his genetic code and can not be expanded at the moment. And very few people actualy even reach this full potential…
Learning and trying to do things does not expands one inborn potential… it only leads to it beeing realized.
You want to consider how ‘equal’ the genders are to the ‘official’ outlook? Think about doing the following. If you are truthful to yourself, the inequality (of the past and now) will be very obvious.
Go anywhere in the US, either today or in the 1960s)
Open an “all-girl” college. See how the support (now a days) floods in (or doesn’t in the ’60s).
Now, open an “all-boy” college in the same spot during the same age.
As a trucker (for 19 years in the ’80s, thru the ’90s and into the ’00s) I have seen many ‘all girl’ colleges. I have not seen any ‘all boy’ colleges and have seen trumpeted the successes of feminists in the military circle (which most females seem to avoid, anyway).
I have the opinion that the extreme focused view of the feminists is a major reason why the successes of women NEED to be trumpeted.
Without the extreme focus, many of those who look at true accomplishments and reward it wouldn’t feel so nervous about rewarding women.
Lawsuits about “Reverse Discrimination” is starting to grow, after all.
In my mind, only one form of discrimination makes sense…
Men prefer women as their life mates, women prefer men as their life mates.
All other forms of discrimination are imposed by society and make no sense.
icwatudidthar
Woden wrote:
Actually, what I meant is the very fact that the exceptions are so rare (that they are trumpeted) proves the rule.
If they weren’t so rare, the rule would be meaningless (and false).
Like the women who run a multi-million dollar business and don’t have a man ‘in their life’ (like a certain O.W.). They are trumpeted around and what their lives lack is ignored. The fact so few women go that route says something about the focus.
Others run businesses, raise a family, and live to the fullest, but are ignored by the ‘trumpeters’ because part of the ‘full life’ includes a man. It also is ignored because those women make it very clear they will give up the corporate life well before they would the family or the man.
Amazing how much wrong there is in (including spelling mistakes) in a short quote. First of all, the problem is not that people aren’t spending the resources to find capable women, they’re using resources to *exclude* capable women.
Now, I don’t attribute this to drooling male pigs. I attribute this to human limited rationality exposed to the exactly the sort of thing that the teacher in the comic was teaching.
A simple example: Quite a number of years ago, I was a CompSci tutor for an Engineering Science course – basically the smartest science students on campus (about 90% male). A test came back, and I noticed that a quiet, friendly young women had done the best out of 60 odd students.
When I picked up on a conversation between the students about how well various groups had done, along with the assumption that the girls had even worse (it was a hard test), I got a bit snarky and interjected that indeed the highest mark has been received by a women.
I then got to overhear a 15 minute discussion about how this couldn’t be so. Not because women are inferior, but because science says it’s so. (Which it didn’t, but pit an belief system vs. statistics, and statistics loses 9 times out of 10.)
I couldn’t “out” the student, but I saw right there that if they didn’t smarten up a *lot*, any of these young men would basically have dismissed a high performing female computer scientists.
Our brain demands if we observe X is right 85% of the time – then X is right 100% of the time, and if necessary, we’ll *make* it right.
Dear God, do you realize that even genetic determinists would be embarrassed by your statement. Even the most ardent of them *might* push the genetic component to 50%.
Unless, of course, you’re *trying* to make them look even more foolish, in which case the attempt was fairly clumsy.
Of course, if you’re under 16, my apologies for being harsh.
@ wobster109:
wobster109 wrote:
With all due respect, you missed the point. This comic isn’t about the statistic in panel 1. Powree and Oliver needed something “politically incorrect” to prompt the invasion of the moral police. Powree and Oliver are critiquing the “politically correct” individuals who see everything in the world through identity groups, incorrectly assign inherent noble qualities to members of groups they perceive to be disadvantaged, and incorrectly assign sinister qualities to members of groups they perceive to be advantaged. The extremists they are criticizing have more in common with the “people” who have unfairly painted you with a broad brush than you think.
Prejudice and discrimination suck. The “people” who have tried to turn you from your course of study because of what you are instead of who you are, are short-sighted idiots who don’t deserve your consideration. You have every right to be upset at them. But I humbly suggest you direct your well-deserved anger at an appropriate target.
@ …sigh….:
Erm…this isn’t a caricature at all. I mean, I really wish it were, but it isn’t. People have had to RESIGN from positions like university president because they stated the facts about the differences between women and men as facts and not as lies made by the patriarchy, and people were completely unwilling to accept the fact that men and women are different on more than a purely physical level.
If this really offends you so much, then, well, goodbye. But if you find it completely unacceptable to show a certain part of your movement/belief system in a negative light, you’re going to have problems down the line, sooner or later.
Cyggles wrote:
No, he had to resign because his remarks became almost instantly synonymous with “women can’t do science”.
Being male and involved in CS education, I had the “pleasure” of having a (male) high-school CS teacher confide that he was glad that even the president of Harvard acknowledged that girls weren’t all that good at CS and now there’d be less pressure on him to ensure some female representation in his higher level CS courses.
Were Summer’s remarks misinterpreted? Of course. But as president of Harvard, you’re responsible for the effects of your remarks, not just the content. It’s why you earn the big bucks over some anonymous nobody.
If I see a small flame in the theater, yell fire, and lots of people die in the panic, saying that I was technically accurate is no defense for the destruction I caused. The damage Summers caused was less dramatic, but far, far more widespread.
(And yes, I feel a few people took “strategic” offense at his comments for their own benefit. But it doesn’t make any difference to the very real, but more subtle damage he did cause.)
@ Valkeiper2012:
I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to a feminist whose opinion on the draft wasn’t “nobody should be drafted”. Maybe you’re misinterpreting their/our negative reaction to the idea of opening the draft to all genders.
@ Tom West:
Ouch. But good on you! That’s indeed the issue that most feminists identify.
@ Cyggles:
I actually discussed this in on a comment on page 2. Lawrence Summers’s resignation was not solely based on his remarks about gender and science, but also issues with a financial conflict of interest he wouldn’t address, and it resulted in a year of paid leave, a different job on his return, and a subsidized million-dollar loan. He was not forced from office by a crowd of howling feminazis.
Do we have to take life so seriously? Can’t we laugh at ourselves and others and not get all upset?
Welp, there goes a large portion of my respect for this comic.
@ 885ertd:
The comic specifically refers to “very intelligent” people. Once you reach the 140+ range, the difference in numbers becomes statistically relevant. Once you reach the 150+ range, the difference becomes quite extreme.
–
The point the comic is raising is that there are people, many of whom refer to themselves as feminists, who view expressions of literal fact as being reflections of the opinion of the scientist presenting them. These people usually the don’t view science in and of itself as in any way different from a political doctrine, religion, or similar belief system.
I know for a fact that the information provided in the comic is accurate, with the exception of the fact that (for completeness’ sake) it only measures the IQ of those who have taken an IQ test, being subject to our capacity to gather information – this could lead to it being overturned if and when we develop more accurate measurement systems. I also know that mention of it (despite being completely accurate) tends to be shouted down as sexist, regardless of the ridiculousness of a scientific conclusion being bigoted in nature.
Similar surveys have indicated mildly higher (3-5 points at the most) average intelligence in women than in men; this has, to my knowledge, never been decried as sexist when brought up (rightfully so, of course).
–
I, for one, fully support Sandra and Woo going in this direction; it’s the right of an artist to speak out and damn the consequences.
Oh, and sorry for all the text. I tend to ramble.
WILDFIRE RUN!
Woden wrote:
Aristotle lived thousands of years ago. He was, generally speaking, about as correct as was possible given the time period; it would be outrageous to expect him to derive things that simply could not be derived without more sophisticated techniques and technology.
He did, however, manage to do so many things using his (flawed) understanding of logic that you’re aware of who he was in the modern day.
And, in fact, his logical system was incomplete. “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man, therefore, Socrates is mortal” is actually flawed, because the priors are faulty. For more modern stuff, I’d recommend the works of Eliezer Yudkowsky. You probably wouldn’t like it, though – it spends the first sixty articles explaining every single way common sense will lead you astray, and the following six hundred teaching you how to use logic to avoid the pitfalls common sense will drop you in.
@ Sarusig:
Don’t worry, tumblr is busy being raided by 4chan right now. I doubt that the author will attract attention from them while they’re being raided with gore and horrific porn. Excellent timing m8!
@ Swift:
Thats because you can’t laugh at yourself or others. This comic is full of strong intelligent female characters.
lumenaide wrote:
I can’t speak for everyone – and I do know there are a lot of otherwise reasonably sensible people who are stupid about various scientific issues – but in my experience of reading discussions where such conclusions are taken to task, a BIG issue in anything scientific regarding differences between the genders is conditioning. For example, all studies of women’s vs. men’s performance in science, math, reading, etc. are subject to criticism regarding the presence of social conditioning, and you literally can’t get subjects young enough to be able to be measured on these things before conditioning is a plausible cause. (I was three or four when Fantasia taught me that you were supposed to act really shy and bashful to get boys to fall in love with you.)
It’s possible that looks at first like “this conclusion is sexist” is more like “this conclusion appears to be made without taking into account factors outside of pure biology, and is being used by many to support women’s biological inferiority, and may reflect sexism in the process somewhere along the line.” Of course, if it’s Tumblr all bets are off, because … Tumblr.
Luke wrote:
Same here. The term is nothing I could rally behind. No matter that people claim it somehow transcended its Latin roots. It didn’t. It’s still a word, carries original meaning, and there is no getting around that.
So, I try focusing on claimed goals instead, because there I can establish value or garbage. A malleable term that’s re-cast to whatever someone wants it to mean in any particular situation, no thank you.
I prefer both emancipation and equality in describing ideals to strive for — because the words aren’t ambivalent.
ymmv
General observations:
1. Many posters ought to read up on some Math. 🙂 It helps.
2. “IQ” is a very limited metric with valid critiques out there to draw from.
3. There is a very strange equating of “extreme IQ” with “desirable to have” going on. You want to be THAT one person?! I bet you that you’d gain more new problems than it’d solve for you. It’s not measuring happiness.
4. You had me at the HP reference. 😛
lumenaide wrote:
Y’know…does the graph even show that there are more intelligent men than women at all?
That looks like two deviation bell-curves, presumably one for men and one for women. The fact that the “lump” is steeper for women just means that there are more women of “normal” intelligence than men.
If I’ve got my rusty understanding of statistics right, what the graph ACTUALLY says is: ‘There are more women of average intelligence than men in a group.” or “There are more men of unusual levels of intelligence (both lower and higher) than women in a group that’s the same size.”
The bottom line is that if you want to claim one of those groups have more intelligent members than the other also has to admit to having more idiots. And this is all assuming that the data pool is both big enough and the same size for both of them. Such a small difference could easily just be marginal error.
As 885ertd said, it should be angry statisticians hauling him away.