Clive Woodward  +  24344 Wed, 03 Mar 04 12:01 AM Could the testosterone factor play a part too? If a man and a women are of of equal mental calibre but the man has been more 'outgoing' and experienced more mental challenges, it stands to reason that his exposure to and practice at problem solving would be reflected in the results of most conventional IQ tests. Women are generally not called upon to be as outgoing as men, so perhaps (with many exceptions) they do not get the same mental exercise as is measured in IQ tests. Socially men also have perhaps more opportunity to flex their mental muscle and have more freedom to do wonders because their behaviour is not inhibited by child rearing to the same extent as women. We should never forget that we are different sides of the same coin! The problems start when those two sides start competing with each other rather than complimenting each other, so just for the record; You look great today honey, and I don't mind if you can't navigate for me. Love you!! Clive Woodward Joined on Mon, Nov 17 2003 Veteran Member 242 Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity

	Chameleon  +  24365 Wed, 03 Mar 04 05:38 AM I think if we're going to say that more men are geniuses, then we should define what is meant by genius. From Webster: Genuis - 5a) A single strongly marked capacity or aptitude 5b) extraordinary intellectual power especially as manifested in creative activity. I'm not one to bandy words. Some people are smart, some people are dumb as rocks. But I think we need to ask the question: "what KIND of aptitude?" The reason that so many men are classified as geniuses, is that genius men (either through natural ability or social means) more heavily populate fields that: 1) are publicly appreciated 2) are higly valued and revered 3) have short term benefits to almost everyone These fields are engineering, natural science, mathematics, computer science, etc. Quantitative fields give quantitative results. But this does not mean they are more valuable than other areas like art, literature, and philosophy. Nor does it mean that interpersonal arts and sciences are not crucial. The first group of fields just produce more tangible benefits, thus they get more attention, thus men are regarded as smarter. Incidentally... I heard ETS replaced the analytical section of the GRE (graduate school entrance exam) with a writing component because women were doing awful on the analytical. Something else to chew on. I smell an affirmative action post brewing! hehe. Chameleon Joined on Wed, Feb 18 2004 Full Member 174 Literature

	Chameleon  +  24366 Wed, 03 Mar 04 05:47 AM By the way, with regard to brain size... Weight of the brain or equivalently, the number of neurons in a brain, is no indicator of intelligence. Learning and intelligence are more of a function of synapse densitiy in the brain. So the number of connections is much more important in determining intelligence than just brain mass. There are about 1E11 brain nerve cells (and between 1E12 and 5E12 glial support cells). But the number of synapses is staggering: ~1.5E14 in the cortex. Chameleon Regards

	Elena  +  24368 Wed, 03 Mar 04 07:36 AM But pieter, I pointed out a possible reason as answer to your question, that no group is more intelligent than the other but the forced position of women in society along History has undermined their progress. There are so many exmaples, as concepts and as facts that I am surprised that the mere doubt raise. -one concept as example: Siddharta Gautama, Buddha. The legend says that his mother died seven days after his birth because she who has borned a Buddha can't serve any other purpose (.......) -two facts as example: Felix Mendelssohn, great musician, his sister Fanny was as gifted as him, but she suffered the patriarchal position of her father who thought that by the fact of being female, a succint musical education would be sufficient, very far from the the education she would have needed in the case she would have been a man. The conviction of her father couldn't be surpassed even seeing the daugther playing the complete 24 preludes and fugues of J.S. Bach at the age of eleven, thus, her potential kept hidden. -highly-gifted children: in families where a boy is highly-gifted, is frequent to discover when it is too late that his sister is the same, but the attention of the family , teachers and experts uses to be centered on boys and not girls, The effect is the same as above, the potential is not developed. There can be another reason for your question. We know the surface of many scientific and artisitic events, we don't study everything, thus, there can be many other women in many fields but we don't know them, just we know the most famous cases. Elena Joined on Thu, Jul 31 2003 Regular Member 827 Enjoying my English study

	rommie  +  24389 Wed, 03 Mar 04 09:51 AM In effect, Elena is questioning the validity of Pieter's original claim. And she does have a point. If the historical data are skewed by sociological forces then we cannot rely on this statistic. It's hard to know what FACTS are in this circumstance. But I think there are SOME facts about which we can be sure. If you take a random cross-section of (western) humans, stick them in an MRI-scanner, and subject them to various tests, you can take 3D-photos of the patterns of neurons firing in their brains. Observationally, and on average, different patterns are observed in males from those observed in females. It is hard to support the hypothesis that this is a result of cultural conditioning ... although of course it still might be. (We don't know enough yet). I don't mind if it turns out that males and females are not the same as each other. Vive la difference. But we most definitely SHOULD learn lessons from the history that Elena point out. We should learn that sexism, along with any other form of bigotry or prejudice, is stupid, counterproductive, and inherently unfair. If human history had shown less such discrimination in the past, we might perhaps have ended up with even more great works of art than we have now ... which I guess was part of Elena's point. Rommie rommie Joined on Mon, Jan 26 2004 Earth orbit Regular Member 606

	Bubr  +  24547 Thu, 04 Mar 04 05:25 PM Returning to the origin of the thread: More than 90% of the world's genious are men. Does this mean that men are more intelligent? To be short: I think this 90% is due to the fact that men think about their SOUL much more often and much more seriously than women do. That's why men tend to succeed in creative fields. For women it's just not as important, because they are concerned about LIFE rather than SOUL. I'll say no words in support of the idea: it's my observation. Bubr Joined on Mon, Nov 10 2003 Full Member 437

	rommie  +  24665 Fri, 05 Mar 04 09:52 AM In order for this assertion to make sense, one must first believe in the concept of a soul. I happen not to. I have been unable to determine any scientific experimental means of detecting or measuring a soul. Is there any chance you could possibly rephrase this in non-supernatural terms to that I might understand what you actually MEAN? Rommie rommie

	Bubr  +  24682 Fri, 05 Mar 04 10:59 AM Soul is an invisible, massless, extended and eternal protoplasmic substance transferring a human's karma from incarnation to incarnation... Kidding! Of course, by 'soul' I meant the contents of a human's thoughts, as well as his emotions. Out of conversations within couples that I hear, out of poetry of men and women that I read I conclude that men tend to fill their mind with information/emotions/knowledge/guesses/philosophy/nonsense and other useless things and then to share it with the others. That's what they (we) understand as manifestation of love. But women generally put instant comfort on the top of the list, and useless things (as pure science, expressing themselves in arts, etc) are not of their interest. What will comfort her, her children, her husband - that's the most important thing. Or, sometimes, women find their place in politics or charity for it also deals with life and comfort. That is why men's poetry is often about what is going around and within them (since sharing it is the love of the man), while women's deals with the mysterious love directly. Here's an illustration (beg pardon in advance for the lame poetical style): Post: 23425 Bubr Conversations