293
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
293 points (100.0% liked)
Showerthoughts
29876 readers
493 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics
- 3.1) NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
- 3.2) Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
- 3.3) Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Using chess as an example after saying women wouldn't be able to compete makes it seem like you believe men and women aren't even on even ground with intelligence and that's absolute fucking bullshit.
Men and women are the same intelligence on average. There are more men at the extremes of the distribution curve for certain attributes, though. And when you are talking about chess players, you are taking a sample of the ends of the distribution curve.
There's also evidence that chess ability and visiospatial cognitive ability are positively correlated with chess ability. Men tend to perform better than woman on average. (Stuff like rotating imaginary 3d shapes for example)
This may be partially why we only see 42 out of 2500 worldwide grandmasters being women. Men may only perform 2.5~4% better, but when you're talking about the extremes (best chess players in world) that small % means a lot.
Tldr: It's not because they aren't on equal intelligence. Women for example score better on verbal cognition tests.
And on average men and women have the same IQ
Is any of this true? Or is it just post-hoc, evo-psych bullshit taken from the era of scientific racism to justify the results men see after gatekeeping their very special hobby.
Oh, hi, wikipedia.
Every claim I've made can be double checked by going on Google scholar or libgen. You'll find multiple studies and recent studies.
And the ones I've made can be double-checked by taking a sociology class.
If I am to be charitable, I think you're just glazing over the elephant in the room. When a little girl is told "they're not as able," they're not as likely to continue. If only 13% of players are women at all, then yeah, duh, they won't be represented in the grandmasters.
Women make up roughly 15% of USCF members yet they only make up roughly 1.5% of grandmasters.
That means they are underrepresented by about an order of magnitude. Women on average are about 200 ELO lower than men. It’s a very large difference and there has been research done to figure out why.
There are no real conclusive findings (as with much of this type of sociological research) but we have evidence for various different reasons. One, women are not encouraged to play chess at the same level that men are. Similar reason that more men go into Computer Science or Physics. It’s not a built in biological difference, but a cultural one.
Another one is that women are younger by 11 years on average, so their ratings haven’t peaked yet. So we should see this gap close in the coming decades. There are also various other inequities between men and women (like for example stereotype threat).
So that explains at least some of the gap. What I’m trying to say is that beyond these factors, there is also a biological difference that results in men being overrepresented in the top chess players. Notice I’m not saying average chess players, but specifically the best in the world (the grandmasters).
Why?
Well, there’s evidence for something called the "greater male variability hypothesis”. Think of every person sitting somewhere on a normal distribution. Pick a trait like aggressiveness or competitiveness.
There are the extremes on both sides of the bell curve. On the left, super passive and on the right super aggressive. Most people clump at the mean, in the center of the bell curve.
There’s evidence that more women cluster around the mean relative to men. Men are overrepresented at the extremes of the bell curve, even though the average is the same as women. Only by a little bit, but it’s statistically significant. That means that if you took a sample of all the super-aggressive and super-passive people, the majority would be men.
When you look at top chess players, they are more likely to have extreme attributes (being ultra-competitive for example helps you get better at chess).
This same effect is also theorized to be why we see that vast majority of prisoners are male. Vast majority of homeless, etc. Because extreme attributes tend to either be really good or really bad.
So that’s one biological difference. The other is the visospatial intelligence. Men tend to score better on visospatial tests when compared to women. This effect is already visible by 2 or 3 months of age, so it’s unlikely to be some sort of cultural effect.
Visiospatial cognitive ability is positively correlated with chess ability. Another biological difference between men and women that likely has some non-zero effect on chess ability.
So why are women underrepresented in grandmasters when compared to males? There is evidence for both
a) external social factors
and
b) innate biological factors
Nobody knows what % of the difference is due to a) or b). We just know there is some non-zero effect for both.
I encourage you to fact check every claim I’ve made. Don’t just look for one research paper that confirms your argument. Each claim I’ve made I’ve seen multiple studies on. There are studies that will say the opposite, but look at it in aggregate. Look at metaanalysis studies.