Science, sex, brains and gender

[PsychoSerenity]

Not as a moral determinant, but shouldn't more brain matter be attributed to some sort of advantage?

If that was the case, whales would be a hell of a lot smarter than us.

Hey, just because they don't tell us what they know, doesn't mean they're not smarter than us!

[PsychoSerenity]

On the subject of the OP, I do find it astonishing that someone could have been doing a study of gender difference in babies, and not thought it was important to do it double-blind.

[camoguard]

Not as a moral determinant, but shouldn't more brain matter be attributed to some sort of advantage?

Depends on how much brain matter is dedicated to other tasks, this is one of the core principles underlying the use of Encephalization Quotient in estimating intelligence.
Also note that you could pack a lot of matter in a small space by folding, too, and the convoluted nature of the cerebral cortex is an example of this.

I'm a computer scientist or software engineer, whichever you like. So without better education, I would imagine brain size to be indicative of storage space or real estate available at minimum. Folds are equivalent to using smaller hard disk platters, you get more disk space. Of course you need some sort of starter program that has a good plan to utilize the space. But having more surface with a good organization strategy should be optimal in some way. Perhaps not as simply as going a big brain is smarter, but maybe by saying "here's the brain size and here's the organization of said brain... so this one is smarter and this other one is only expected to be 75% as smart" As a substitute for smarts you could say "as quick at sorting objects into a known order" or something material.

[GreyICE]

Not as a moral determinant, but shouldn't more brain matter be attributed to some sort of advantage?

Depends on how much brain matter is dedicated to other tasks, this is one of the core principles underlying the use of Encephalization Quotient in estimating intelligence.
Also note that you could pack a lot of matter in a small space by folding, too, and the convoluted nature of the cerebral cortex is an example of this.

I'm a computer scientist or software engineer, whichever you like. So without better education, I would imagine brain size to be indicative of storage space or real estate available at minimum. Folds are equivalent to using smaller hard disk platters, you get more disk space. Of course you need some sort of starter program that has a good plan to utilize the space. But having more surface with a good organization strategy should be optimal in some way. Perhaps not as simply as going a big brain is smarter, but maybe by saying "here's the brain size and here's the organization of said brain... so this one is smarter and this other one is only expected to be 75% as smart" As a substitute for smarts you could say "as quick at sorting objects into a known order" or something material.

Which would be great, if brains were hard drives. But you realize the giant friggin flaw when you pick up a hard drive, and plug it in the wall, and then ask it to run windows. It doesn't run windows. Or linux. Or anything. Because it's a bloody hard drive.

Processing units run things. Hard drives store data. We store data in our processing units, and process data with our storage capacity. Brains are nothing like modern computers. That's what the programmer approach to studying the mind has always done wrong. It's like "Okay, here we have the optical program, and over there must be the auditory program, and here's the language program, and here's the..."

In reality, the brain just has a handful of programs. It uses the same one for the ears and the eyes, and plenty of other things too. And the brain works on patterns. Computers work sequentially. The brain is a pattern sorter - brains can get by with many less operations than a computer because their ability to recognize patterns is a thousand times greater.

Size and neurons firing (operations) have never translated into anything real because it's all about the speed of pattern recognition and the variety of pattern sorts the brain has.

[charlou]

On the subject of the OP, I do find it astonishing that someone could have been doing a study of gender difference in babies, and not thought it was important to do it double-blind.

It's good to learn from at least one person that you've listened to the interview. I was gobsmacked by that also, and concerned that the result of that study and other similarly iffy ones are apparently still popularised in journals?

I want to listen again because there are a few points of interest that I'd like to note down and comment on here.

[GreyICE]

Double blind has some problems in the real world, and it may have run into some of those.

It's frequently very easy to say that the researchers will not know, but end up in a situation that the researchers actually do not know. Medicine can run afoul of this very badly.

[charlou]

Double blind has some problems in the real world, and it may have run into some of those.

It's frequently very easy to say that the researchers will not know, but end up in a situation that the researchers actually do not know. Medicine can run afoul of this very badly.

Can you better explain what you mean here, GreyICE?

[Trolldor]

Where's the 'cooking and cleaning' part of the female brain?
More research needs to be done on how to make it more dominant.

[stripes4]

Where's the 'cooking and cleaning' part of the female brain?
More research needs to be done on how to make it more dominant.

I come from a highly evolved line of women who have pretty well lost those functions altogether.

[Trolldor]

that's 'regressive' evolution if I ever heard one.

[charlou]

Where's the 'cooking and cleaning' part of the female brain?
More research needs to be done on how to make it more dominant.

I come from a highly evolved line of women who have pretty well lost those functions altogether.

It's a line of women? .. Are we related?

[Mr.Samsa]

Double blind has some problems in the real world, and it may have run into some of those.

It's frequently very easy to say that the researchers will not know, but end up in a situation that the researchers actually do not know. Medicine can run afoul of this very badly.

Can you better explain what you mean here, GreyICE?

I can't say for certain, but I think the first part refers to the fact that whilst double-blinded research is good (and triple-blinded is better), in the real world this is sometimes impossible to do. In the Simon Baron-Cohen study the research had to be done in the neonatal unit of the hospital, and even though it might have been possible to blindfold the experimenter who played the part of the "face", and change the clothes of the newborns so they were all the same and remove all indications of gender from the room and cot - this simply would not have been practical (partly, I imagine, because the mothers would have been uneasy with so much disruption to their newborn).

The data they took were assessed by blinded people though, so that's something at least. It's a difficult thing to study because they needed to make sure that the only difference between the stimuli was the social vs non-social aspect of it. So since a mobile moves, they can't use a static picture of a face as a comparison stimuli.

The other problem with that particular study is that some of the babies were tested in the cot, and some were tested in their mother's lap. So no only do you have the unblinded experimenter that could unconsciously alter results, you also have the mother potentially amplifying any unconscious encouragement.

These studies get published because they can still provide us with useful information, as long as we are aware of their limitations.

As for GreyICE's second statement, I'm not too sure what he means.. I think he meant to say:

It's frequently very easy to say that the researchers will not know, but end up in a situation that the researchers actually do not know. Medicine can run afoul of this very badly.

where we sometimes assume that even though it hasn't been specifically controlled for, "I'm sure the researchers probably didn't know about [important information that could affect results]", when in reality they often do, even if they aren't aware of it.

[Warren Dew]

Hey, just because they don't tell us what they know, doesn't mean they're not smarter than us!

Indeed it's to be noted that some dolphins seem to have learned some human language, while no humans seem to have learned any dolphin language.

Personally, I'm still of the opinion that humans are smarter, but really only based on the human encephalization quotient being higher. I do suspect there's some overlap in the ranges.

[Trolldor]

*facepalm*

Humans are smarter. They really are. They do stupid things with that intelligence, but they are irrefutably smarter.
There's a reason we were the ones who landed on the moon and not the crap people.

[Mr.Samsa]

Indeed it's to be noted that some dolphins seem to have learned some human language, while no humans seem to have learned any dolphin language.

A number of animals have learnt some important aspects of language but the animals that can do this are essentially just any that we decide to choose (rather than it being a function of their intelligence). For example, nobody thinks of the pigeon as particularly smart but it can grasp the concept of grammar quicker than humans, and chickadees are generally better at recursion than humans.

I think this is just part of the problem with intelligence research, where some researchers think that "things that humans can do" are valid measures of intelligence.

Personally, I'm still of the opinion that humans are smarter, but really only based on the human encephalization quotient being higher. I do suspect there's some overlap in the ranges.

Sure, but then you'd have to accept the shrew as the most intelligent animal (according to EQ)..

Out of interest, does anyone have any idea of how they specifically rate the intelligence of animals when they investigate how well it correlates to EQ?

*facepalm*

Humans are smarter. They really are. They do stupid things with that intelligence, but they are irrefutably smarter.
There's a reason we were the ones who landed on the moon and not the crap people.

Whilst I generally agree that humans probably are smarter than other animals, it's not quite as clear cut as you make it sound. A lot of our advances or achievements come about as a result of serendipitous attributes we have, like being bipedal, having opposable thumbs, culture, etc. So when it comes to understanding the world, we are obviously more "intelligent" than other animals because we have a few thousands years advantage (from saved knowledge passed down)..

When you put humans and animals in an environment-neutral situation and get a "raw" measure of intelligence, you'll find that the results of humans and other animals are indistinguishable most of the time. And sometimes humans perform worse than animals in what are generally considered a human-centric accomplishments - for example, pigeons are better at solving complicated statistical problems like the Monty Hall dilemma.