I’ve been hoping that someone would come out and explain how this claim that women are becoming smarter than men was accomplished. I need to know the scenario and the mechanism, so I’ve developed a few of my own that I hope to see appearing soon in the Daily Mail.
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Late at night, when no one was looking, UFOs have been abducting our women and enslaving them in the Love Factories on Mars (because as we all know, Mars Needs Women). So that we don’t catch on, they’ve been replacing them with femdroids with cybernetic brains that are very good at cheating on tests.
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Beginning in about 1980, all female infants were selectively injected with a Communist mind control virus that turned them into soulless, freedom-hating machines who were good at gymnastics and engineering. When the time is ripe, their programming will be activated and they will rise up to overthrow Western running dog democracies.
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The government has top secret labs where clone babies with enhanced genetically engineered intelligence are being raised. Only females are used in this project for technical cloning reasons. They’ve been swapping out normal babies in maternity wards and replacing them with these Humanity 2.0 versions for years.
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Big Pharma has been testing brain-enhancing drugs by hiding them in birth control pills. The recent results are the consequence of clandestine human trials. Little known, related fact: they’re also doping Viagra with a stupidity drug.
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A select team of exceptionally intelligent pick-up artists have been using their talents to inseminate a majority of women around the world, cuckolding all the dumber men, and increasing the frequency of their super-smart alleles in the population to a remarkable degree. They also all fortuitously carry a Y-dominant allele that causes defective Y-bearing sperm, so all of their children are female. Which increases the frequency of babes, schwing!
Unfortunately, there’s one little problem with those scenarios: they’re all ridiculous, requiring large-scale changes in the genetic composition of a world-wide population numbering in the billions within a few generations, and that all of the positive changes would be selective for one sex. You simply can’t argue in any coherent way that women are becoming smarter than men or that women are the smarter sex. You can reasonably say that the evidence shows that women have higher IQ scores than men now.
Because, as I’ve been saying for a long time, there’s a difference between IQ scores and the actual potential for knowledge, learning, and that general poorly defined thing we call ‘intelligence’.
What this current study by James Flynn of worldwide intelligence test scores actually shows is that a) whatever intelligence tests measure is plastic, b) the variation in those scores is not a measure of biological limitations (although I’d argue that our intelligence is a biologically human property), and c) shifting cultural environments can induce relatively rapid changes in the responses of developing human minds.
Women aren’t getting smarter. They have the same biological properties in this generation that they had in the previous generation, and the generation before that. What’s changing is a culture that allows women to slip free of sociological limitations at a young age and encourages them to practice using those brains. Their grandmothers were just as smart, but were molded in ways that limited expression of their intelligence. I also suspect that there are factors emerging which are imposing limits on male behavior and experiences — there are some troubling signs that some social expectations are imposing a new kind of stereotype threat on men.
Of course, there is some anecdotal counter-evidence. I have a daughter who went from being totally reliant on Mommy and Daddy to being an independent young woman, almost overnight. The alien pod-person/cybernetic brain implant/radical brain-enhancement doping theories do have some attractiveness.
And that is one of the reasons why we like you PZ (or some of us at least).
Wrong on all counts, PZ. It’s part of a vast gynospiracy, that is only now starting to come to fruition. Why am I telling you this? Because it’s already too late to stop it. The Matriarchy is inevitable. Resistance is useless. ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAAA!
What do you mean? I’m sure I can hazard a guess.
Wait, you mean we can’t blame it all on Rebecca Watson? ;-D
I want to blame this on Rebecca Watson but Brett McCoy beat me to it.
So, I’ll blame that Brett beat me to it on Rebecca Watson.
Whatinhell else are you going to put under the tag “girls from Brazil”???
I only use tags for snark. Maybe nothing else, ever.
But you never know, as the Gynocracy Conspiracy rears it’s gigantic unfurling labia to swallow us all.
They must have left out blond women in the study. :-)
But you never know, as the Gynocracy Conspiracy rears it’s gigantic unfurling labia to swallow us all.
This doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, actually… Sort of like Cthulhu but more feminine…
@Howlin’ Wolf:
Bad! Bad! Go in the corner! *shakes a newspaper!*
I knew a woman* like that once…
…Hey, she hurt my Man Fee Fees (IMPORTANT) by laughing at my Pee Pee (SOURCE OF IMPORTANT MAN FEE FEES)!
I went home, cried, ate a cake, and all was better. Until the next time.
{Shakes fist}
DAMN YOU UNSYMPATHETIC WIMMINZ!!!!!
Louis
* She was not Rebecca Watson, but she’d heard of her, therefore I blame Rebecca Watson.
(Incidentally the Big Pharma thing is true, we are, in fact, responsible for Rebecca Watson.)
yeah! He commonly asserts things that I would like to be true too!
As I mentioned in TET, I find the presentation suspect. It could easily become an MRA talking point (all those scholarships for teh wimmins, when they’re already smarter!!!1!1).
Do you think that there is no difference between IQ scores and potential for knowledge/intelligence? Is it not a reasonable and so far unproven null hypothesis that IQ tests do not, indeed, map directly to those characteristics? Did I miss some huge leap forward in the literature?
No, You just missed Chas’ normal reactions to these things. Like ignoring that IQ tests measure a set of skills that are highly trainable, usually with tests that are highly cultural dependent.
He really likes evopsych too.
@Chas
So do you think that IQ tests can accurately measure someone’s intelligence? Or does the test only measure what it’s been designed to measure – which may not be exactly what we think of as intelligence?
Until we can accurately define what we are attempting to measure, how can it be said that the measurement is accurate?
I’m all for being (partially) swallowed by labia (it’s one of the many fun things my wife and I enjoy doing together), but that particular image is going to haunt me for a while.
Well, yes, I am familiar with he of the shifting nyms (unless he doesn’t do that anymore?). But I wasn’t particularly crazy about playing “my team vs. your team” wrt evo-psych and cultural/social influences today so I wanted to just stick to the specific statements made. I truly haven’t kept up with the literature enough to just assume that no breakthroughs have been made, however unlikely they seem :-).
Oh, and while I’m sure it goes without saying, read “unproven” as “not disproven”. I know, sloppy. I promise I’ll work on it.
Chas is stable with his nyms as far as I know.
Or rather: Nym, as he is stable
I have no idea why this brought to mind a giant, fleshy umbrella. :-/
That’s right, everyone! Behold the power of Audley and DarkFetus for we shall destroy your puny democracy!
Wait, wait, wait. Every evopsych troll we get tell us that evopsych totally proves that bitchez are INFERIOR, you know, cuz biology!
So women being smarter is unpossible!
You simply can’t argue in any coherent way … that women are the smarter sex.
Simply can!
Human females mature younger, and much more comprehensively.
Women do the majority of the world’s work, and do it successfully, and more often stay out of trouble with the cops. In the US, women are much less likely to back the hardcore asshole platforms & politicos.
Clincher: I’m 99% sure that no woman wrote the lyrics to this song.
” they’re also doping Viagra with a stupidity drug.”
Nose/milk inducing humor.
PZ: Nothing in the link indicates that anyone thinks other than what you have written. So what gives?
What mechanism would explain a biological difference in reasoning ability between sexes? I’m not a biologist, but I’m having a difficult time seeing how that would work.
Especially when social mechanisms can definitely explain differences in aptitude (i.e. underprivileged groups performing poorly on standardized tests.)
PZ, your theory needs more Nazis. Also, you missed the required number of occurences of the words “communist,” “Marxist,” and/or “socialist” by 200%, didn’t say “illuminati” anywhere, and your work is completely devoid of a screed against “globalism.” No reputable right wing propaganda outfit will pick this up. It’s just not credible.
Marginally related, if only because it involves an IQ test:
I once dueled with a racist troll named Gabriel who asserted that black people were genetically inferior. I asked him for a scientific study that showed the existence of some genetically based mental disadvantage prevalent in the group, and, as my readers and I had been harping on him for a while, to define “black” in a meaningful way.
He sent me a link to a PDF about minority kids doing worse on IQ tests, which included a fair bit of limitations and reservations about drawing big conclusions on the data or making any conclusions of what caused the difference in IQ scores, since they knew there were numerous cultural, social, and economic factors involved, not all of which could be controlled for. It also specifically mentioned that the IQ score variation within a group was larger than the variation between groups.
Nowhere did they examine the kids’ DNA. Racial groups in the study were determined by the kid’s self-description, not by genetic measurements. It didn’t fulfill any of the criteria I requested. Of course, Gabriel had to ignore that fact and did a lot of his own spin to try to shoehorn the results to fit his apparent belief in near-absolute genetic determinism and rejection of the plastic nature of the human mind.
I won’t be surprised if he someday out of the blue, he graces my new blog with similar attempts to badmouth women.
I’m sure this has already appeared in The Daily Mail. The newspaper for those who aren’t quite a full dollar.
I’m smart enough to know that my wife is smarter than me…
PZ, if you want your theories to appear in the Daily Fail, you’ll need to blame illegal immigrants. And include something on how it will affect house prices – it is the paper for the middle-class fruitcake after all.
One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the genetically modified women overlords will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new GMW overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted male personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others males to toil in their underground fertility caves…
Mine’s going through that right now. :-)
@nickcharles
Death by Snu-Snu?
“Jebus put Man and Woman together
To see which one was smarter.
Some say Man, but I say No,
The Women run the Men like a puppet show.
That’s right, the Women are smarter.”
Thought that lyric was appropriate. (And RIP, Robert Palmer.)
IANB either, but there’s some physical differences in he brain, so it’s not out of the question.
The variables quickly get messy though, especially with the scope of individual variation and cultural bias on this area. so, saying something definite is incredibly difficult. I haven’t seen somebody coming close yet.
That population y scores better on an IQ test means just that. They will probably do better on tasks closely linked to the type of test, but it means just that. It certainly doesn’t illuminate some underlying potential entirely separate from training and experience.
Typo; it’s actually Lars needs women. An mp3 can be found by hitting the ‘fun stuff’ link and choosing Death Sheep Radio. Item #245 seems to be the one. Don’t be drinking milk whilst wearing a nice suit.
Uh, no need. Divert all that blood away from the brain and you get the same effect. No study cite needed; you can observe the effect quite commonly.
nickcharles
?
Shouldn’t that be “overladies”?
Aargh – IQ is such a loaded term, and used for marginalizing already-disenfranched people all the time.
Even with all that, the Grateful Dead (as zapala notes) came to the same conclusion nearly thirty years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is7FKcywuhI
You’re giving it FAR too much credit.
“Benefit scroungers” and something about which celebrities have gained weight would help too.
Isn’t the IQ test re-calibrated over time so that the average, no matter what the results, always comes out to be 100?
Never cared for the figure; it seems to have the biggest following among losers who want to claim they’re smart, or by racists (or misogynists; making this IQ test result hilarious to me) trying to claim that non-whites (or women) are inferior due to supposedly lower IQ scores, as is described at post 27.
Even if it were true that women were getting to be objectively more intelligent than men, I don’t see why anyone secure in their own intellect would have a problem. More intelligent conversation to go around!
My understanding is that IQ scores are highly heritable. Of course, ‘heritable’ is a technical term, and it only talks about the variance within a population, not across populations.
Considering the large differences in IQ between various social groups, IQ is clearly affected by nongenetic factors. Human IQ has been going straight up for decades, and doesn’t look like it’s slowing down.
Regarding the difference between IQ and ‘intelligence’, I can only say that IQ has around 0.5 correlation for performance in school and on the job. Even if it’s not measuring the totality of ‘intelligence’, it’s definitely measuring something useful that’s a lot like intelligence.
Soo… weirdly enough, I agree with the ‘spirit’ of this post, that intelligence depends heavily on the social environment, and the recent uptick in women’s IQ scores probably is because of that. (Indeed, it can only be because of that.)
Women have the same biological properties they had in the last generation, but culture allows this generation to slip free of the sociological limitations of their parents, therefore women are getting smarter.
In other words, you are smarter than your grandparents.
(I am not a psychologist. Feel free to tell me how I’m wrong and stupid, though of course that invitation is unnecessary.)
Yeah, I always got the impression that the public in general takes smart to mean your current ability to demonstrate knowledge and complex thinking skills, as opposed to the innate maximum potential you could have reached if you grew up exactly the right way.
Except maybe among dumb dumbs that think the brightest kids in their elementary classes were just born that way- genetically predestined I suppose.
I can kind of see some foggy link between viewing how smart someone is by this definition and patriarchy though- almost as if our ancestors that established the whole system stumbled on a way to drag women down and blur the line until nobody could tell women possessed this positive trait that was now classified as masculine.
I tend to be terribly ignorant about that though so if the pattern holds I’m on completely the wrong track.
[OT]
furiously sleepy:
Performance ability ain’t intelligence.
(Intelligence refers to the ability to comprehend and apply concepts)
Duh. IQ is what IQ tests measure, and practice improves performance at them.
It measures performance at certain tasks, no more.
The reference was women are becoming smarter than men; that means that the ratio has changed, no more.
(It’s a comparison!)
If you want to get it into the Daily Mail – “Will immigrant women take our jobs?” Got to play the right angles.
“Will dole-scrounger immigrant women take our jobs? Why it will hit you home value!”
FTFY; yes it’s illogical but this is the Daily Fail.
There must a sort of Pictionary/Bingo game you could make up where one takes a perfectly reasonable headline and adds a word or short phrase per turn, making it gradually more and more Failish.
“There must a sort of Pictionary/Bingo game”
Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s how they generated their headlines
Anyway a bit too long for a headline, best saved for the first paragraph and then put a refutation in the last one that cancels it all out. Not as if their readers could ever manage that amount of text to reach it.
Ah such a wonderful paper that can complain about immigrants (probably Muslim to boot) coming over here and taking our jobs and the next day complain about the same group coming over to milk our benefits system.
Don’t be silly. When they’re in a hurry, they use the Daily Mail Headline Generator. And when they’re really in a hurry, they use the Daily Mail Story Generator, too.
(A slightly different headline generator is used for the Daily Express. After all, they have to ensure that the front page every day features at least one story about the late Diana, Princess of Wales.)
You linked twice to the same page. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty funny script. I’m still amused by this: «cyberterrorists have been injecting crack into the kneecaps of innocent passers by».