[totemizer]

as i wrote it elsewhere already regarding the original "manifesto":

i am curious, if this person is ok with questioning their belief in "traits" that are defined on the level of sex. after all they are the one who says that "some ideas are too sacred to be discussed" and when i bring this up, i often find that the "differences" between the sexes are exactly one of these ideas.

the reactions to this talk are a good example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqR4cw9Amlg

[heurist]

Are you okay with people questioning your questioning of gender differences? Obviously there are differences. It is frustrating to continually have to explain how irrelevant they are to performance in 99.9% of business functions.

1. The cohesiveness of the organization is more important than any particular individual.

2. Men have greater variance in many skills than women do, so there are more men on the high end and low end of the talent spectrum.

3. On average we are the same, and there are enough humans around today that few of us exist in a zone with no significant overlap.

4. The genetic and developmental formation of men exposes us to greater mutation rates than women. The mutations that add the extra variance in talent can have chaotic and deleterious effects in other aspects (for instance diminished social awareness, autism, aggression).

5. Socially aware individuals are more likely to seek and form stronger teams. A talented individual has a high productivity relative to other individuals, but teams can multiply in ways individuals can't.

6. High individual talent can be abrasive and egotistical. Egos are toxic on teams and in business because they prevent you from seeing the wider picture. A wide perspective is vital to obtaining a competitive edge. Abrasion over time causes other team members to burn out, causing loss of intellectual capital and a bad brand in the talent market. (Not all talented individuals are abrasive).

7. Without a solid team you have no chance at accomplishing anything worthwhile.

8. Empathetic individuals keep the team emotionally secure and are able to design organizational structures that best leverage existing resources.

9. Organizational diversity has been shown to positively impact collective performance. Every new perspective is an edge over the competition, an insight into a new set of consumers.

10. Gender balances out in the end. We are all taking our own roads through life and each of us has a unique skill set that we are using to make ourselves happier in this weird imbalanced society. In a hierarchical organization, one can leverage their skills to obtain higher posts even if they are not exactly the same skills of their predecessors. It all contributes.

It's simple. The argument is pointless. The only reason I'm posting this is because Yonatan put himself on the front lines of this particular fight and he didn't have to. He's going to have to argue his point down to meaningless details to convince those absurdly stubborn people who refuse to get their heads out of the sand.

Yes, we are different. That's a good thing.

[totemizer]

I am ok with people questioning anything, the only situation when this is not ok when there is an emergency, and for those situation we should be prepared ahead, so there is no question what we have to do. I see that you agree that the differences are irrelevant. Or how I would say, the effect size is too small to be considered as a factor.

1. however any organization should have a purpose beyond sustaining itself and if it has no such, it should be dismantled immediatelly

2. probably true, but it's definitely more about the circumstances than about the individuals

3. agreed

4. this is as much about diagnosing behaviors as about expressing the said behaviors. my views of how minds work significantly differ from the views that use these diagnoses

5. i don't believe in "talented individuals". rest of this point is fine by me.

6. this whole thing is nonsense to me. sure, what you say is true, but as I said I don't believe in talent. I also don't believe that you need to be competitive to be productive. I don't think a team or an individual has to be competitive in any situation besides competitions, and those are actually quite rare. obviously, if someone believes they are competing when they are not or should not, that can be extremely destructive.

7. the grass is green, the sky is blue, and truisms are truisms. :)

8. sure, but to be empathetic is to express empathy when it's appropriate, which can be learned. some people learn it fast other's maybe never. but most often the reason for this is not because they were born like that, but because the circumstances didn't allow them to learn it.

9. diversity is good in ecosystems because it gives resilience. that's true again, in almost any sufficiently complex situation

10. depends what you mean by "balance" & "in the end". certainly i don't see it being nowhere balanced currently, i know lots of people who are forced into roles based on their gender (sometimes even by their sex) that they can not fulfill and it's just bad for everyone involved.

I don't think we are different enough for us to talk about it how different we are and definitely we are not different enough so we have the society built around these differences as it is right now. Maybe not where you live, and if you are lucky like that, be glad for it. Where I live, women are oppressed actively. They have to spend way more time to be accepted by their peers than men, they have to work way more than men to be accepted as productive. They have less chances to have say in important decisions. etc.