[BurningFrog]

There are definitely differences in both generic mental abilities and what fields interest people between the sexes. From an evolutionary biology perspective, it would be really weird if there weren't.

To be clear, men and women are equally mentally gifted as a whole, but focused on different skills, and with bigger variance in men.

Pinker's "Blank Slate" lays out the case well: http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial/dp/15012...

[esailija]

You mean evolutionary psychology, not biology. The former is basically a pseudoscience and the latter makes no such claims.

[BurningFrog]

I'm not even saying this is an established scientific claim, only that it would be really weird if the statistical differences between men and women were 100% outside of the brain, given how different the evolutionary pressures are.

Evolutionary psychology does have some problems :) It's easy to tell dazzling and believable stories in that frame, but much harder to prove them empirically.

I think some real science is being done in the field, but I agree that when people make EP arguments on the internet, you need to apply a lot of skepticism.

[JoeAltmaier]

I've understood that while men are better at spatial reasoning, they are barely statistically better. And while women are better at language tasks, they are way better. So the conversation has always been slanted in that way.