Delicious LiveJournal Links for 5-11-2009

[andrewducker]

• Optimistic Sci-F
  I'd been meaning to write this post myself. Thankfully someone else saved me the trouble.
  (tags: scifi Trek)
• How a smart meter works
  I want one!
  (tags: electricity gas UK)
• Why can't we concentrate?
  Which highlights, amongst other things, that Facebook, Twitter (and Livejournal) are _novelty producers_, and that these will dripfeed you tiny bursts of satisfaction that distract you from concentrating on anything more productive.
  (tags: culture mind concentration)
• Rapture Ready
  Screenshots from a forum for those who believe that the Rapture will be here any second now... Funny _and_ scary.
  (tags: christianity usa internet forum)
• Interesting piece on culture, feminism and uneven distribution
  The feminist critique of society started when some women systematically looked up at the top of society and saw men everywhere: most world rulers, presidents, prime ministers, most members of Congress and parliaments, most CEOs of major corporations, and so forth â” these are mostly men.
  
  Seeing all this, the feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society is set up to favor men. It must be great to be a man.
  
  The mistake in that way of thinking is to look only at the top. If one were to look downward to the bottom of society instead, one finds mostly men there too. Who's in prison, all over the world, as criminals or political prisoners? The population on Death Row has never approached 51% female. Who's homeless? Again, mostly men. Whom does society use for bad or dangerous jobs? US Department of Labor statistics report that 93% of the people killed on the job are men.
  (tags: gender psychology culture feminism sociology men women)

Comments

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

The feminism piece is very interesting.

I must say, if his conclusions are right (and some of his data alone is alarming), it seems like we need a male-ism equivalent movement now...

[andrewducker]

I'm not carried that far. But I do think that there's some interesting data there.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

I guess what got my attention was that I'm less than keen on anyone being considered "expendable"...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

The topic of optimistic sci-fi came up at Worldcon. I pointed out that a lot of the most recent scifi -- Vinge, Stross, even Egan, are gritty in tone, but cautiously optimistic in content: the theme is often "OK, we've cured all known diseases and are rising exponentially towards utopia, the problems this produces are..."

I think I agree that I sometimes miss the pure idealism of things like startrek, but was pleasantly surprised that some of that steampunk faith-in-technology was still strong in there after all.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2007/09/17/beneficiary-of-wildly-unfair-system-denies-system-exists-while-benefitting-from-it-again/

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

It's a novel thought, but he ignores a lot of evidence that does not support his point - or is uninterested in it and never thought to question it.

etc. Ulcers.

[andrewducker]

Wow. What a delightfully unconvincing response.

His first attempt to argue that men are smarter than women
I didn't see him do that. In fact, he says "So to suggest that men are smarter than women is wrong."

The response is full of personal attacks and the only area it seems to have an actual point is where it talks about historical oppression, the rest of the time it comes across as pure rant.

Which is fine - I'm all in favour of people using the internet as ranting space, it just doesn't do much to convince me.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Is there any chance of you specifying if a link is to a video rather than an article? I don't often do video at work, too much hassle sorting the sound, and I can't skim read a video. I'm often clicking through from your links pointlessly and closing the destination after I realise what it is.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Patriarchy hurts men too.

This is just as much a product of traditional gender roles as the good stuff - men are strong, capable, useful; women are weak, need protecting, etc.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely. It's a system that causes problems through assumptions about gender roles. Nobody does well out of being put into a box.

[andrewducker]

I do try to remember to tag them "video" - but I am pretty crap at it. I'll work on that :->

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Nobody does well out of being put into a box.

I keep trying to tell this to fellow feminists, too. F'r'instance, lots of feminists advocate single sex schools. Most girls do better in single sex schools because they have been socialised to shut up and listen when boys talk. I was socialised to make boys shut up, and have a very male learning pattern. I'd not mind single sex schools if I was allowed to go to the boys' one...

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a very large absence of data - he cites relatively few studies, and most of those he mentions one couldn't track down on the information given.

His actual hypothesis in there (males are more prone to risk-taking than females; this may explain certain social phenomena; this may be explicable in terms of evolutionary pressures) isn't remarkable and is moderately plausible; it's really the hyperbole he lumps on top of it that's striking.

Also, I find (in a way I can't articulate very well, alas) something not terribly wonderful in the way that he extrapolates from supposed evolutionary history to modern individuals. For instance, his supposed pressures don't explain at all the greater variance in male IQ that he posits earlier on in the piece. He seems by and large to have a model that men and women are somehow evolving independently.

Finally, I'm a bit disturbed by his attitude that if a feature evolved to be there, it *ought* to be there. It's all a bit confused.

[andrewducker]

I'm not on his side - and there are definitely problems in his argument. The bit I copied out was the bit that particularly caught my attention.

I just find your criticisms of it a lot more persuasive than the ones on pandagon :->

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I wasn't saying you were on his side. I can envision a less frothing-at-the-mouth article that starts with the hypothesis, reviews the evidence for and against it, and then tries to make a rational estimate of the possible magnitude of the social effects, including its interplay with culture. That could be interesting. This is just unconvincingly ranty.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Let's leave aside the content of his essay, which it would take ages to analyse in full, look at just this sentence:

'Seeing all this, the feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society is set up to favor men. It must be great to be a man.'

Now, does this seem to be a mature attempt to get to grips with feminism. Feminism has been going for longer than my lifetime, and has engaged hundreds of academics and other thinkers (not all of whom I agree with needless to say) both male and female.

Given this relatively non-controversal background (which even anti-feminists must surely agree with) does it seem likely that what has motivated these thinkers is 'Wow it must be great to be a man'?

Or does it suggest that he has made a cursory engagement with a subject, drawn over-hasty conclusions, and overshot himself through misplaced confidence in his own abilities?

[andrewducker]

It sounds like someone at a conference making a speech, complete with "humour". I didn't take it seriously - it sounded like the kind of thing designed to get a laugh from an audience by being given in a light-hearded style.

Clearly it's going to enrage a certain audience, of course :->

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I'm not enraged, I just think this kind of low-brow guff gets a free pass while similar guff from women would be (probably rightly) ignored.

[andrewducker]

Aaah. I haven't seen this kind of thing getting a free pass. I assume it's happening somewhere else I haven't bumped into. That would be annoying.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

yeah that hypothesis is blandish and kind of obvious.

What I'd like to know ss there any supporting data/research for the small/deep vs wide/shallow networking that he posits? Is there any evidence that that does indeed lead to the social setups we have now?

Hypothetical explanations of how we go where we are are all very well, but only useful if how we can use such knowledge as a force for change in suitable direction (of which we all of course have our own ides...):-).

Someday I really must writeup where my particular discomforts with "how things are" are...

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

Although men certainly benefit from it a hell of a lot more. Unless you're small, weak, or gay, at which point you're probably fucked too.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

Hot damn your posts made me think about the Bechdel Test again and now I can see why I'm not liking it so much. Namely...

...it totally cuts out the majority of film. If you won't watch a film unless it has passed the test, then you'll never watch anything, including some of the best stuff that's been made. I think it's fantastic as an argument as to why we should be creating more fiction that features women in lead roles instead of men, but now I see how the power can be used for the dark side.

[andrewducker]

And in the post on the Bechdel test you'll see that discussed :->

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Is it possible to ever consider all the evidence? And, even if he had, and tried to refute every counter argument against his, how much good would this actually do if, for example, something like standpoint feminist epistemology (is that right?) could then just say he's arguing like a man, using the wrong scientific type criteria?

[broin.livejournal.com]

Benefit in what sense?

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

In the sense that the men's gender role still lets them play in a corporate world with no glass ceiling, enjoy full rights under Sharia law, and in general be one step ahead of women most everywhere. It might suck to be put in a box, but they're still in equal.

My comments about being small, weak, or gay refer to the social pressures placed upon men who have to compete with other men socially or physically.

And yes, I know that my comment probably sounds very obvious.