[HelloWorldInWS]

Your two examples list physical differences, not mental ones. Forgetting the fact that your examples are both wrong (you don't have to be tall to [play basketball][1], nor do you have to be biologically female to model bikinis), mental differences are markedly different from physical ones, because unlike a requirement such as "you must be capable of lifting 200lbs" which _may_ skew male, almost all humans are innately & biologically capable of the critical thought required to program. The differences we see today comes from nurture, not nature.

There are no biological "skills" that men might possess innately that should make them a first-choice by default, nor is there any reason to ever pick a candidate over another because of some biological "fact". At the end of the day, you judge a candidate by their output (performance, displayed intellect), not their input (nature OR nurture).

This is the whole point of Google's unconscious bias training: humans create incorrect correlations between input (nature|nutrue) and output (perf, intellect) in the form of biases-- i.e., "if you're too emotional you can't think as rationally as someone who is less emotional, therefore you cannot perform at the same level as a less emotional thinker". The problem here is that the correlation doesn't hold; it's a bias, not a fact.

Here's the point: your "biological facts" are biases, evidenced by the fact that you think you need to be tall to play basketball or biologically female to be a bikini model, and neither of these things are actually true.

[1]: http://www.complex.com/sports/2013/05/the-15-greatest-short-...

[in3d]

You're making unsupported claims about the differences coming from nurture, not nature. It's very likely a combination of both. There appears to be differences in mental rotation skills between males and females (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_rotation) and males appear to have a higher variance in IQ scores (which can result in large differences in top percentiles). Men also score higher on the Cognitive Reflection Test https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5089055/

The implicit bias testing has serious issues: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/psychologys-racism-meas...

[skj]

Weird that a group of people who spend their youth being told that they're naturally bad at math and critical reasoning have hangups when given these tests. Only explanation is that their doubters were right.

[PavleMiha]

"The experiment was done on 3- to 4-month-old infants using a 2D mental rotation task. They used a preference apparatus that consists of observing during how much time the infant is looking at the stimulus. They started by familiarizing the participants with the number "1" and its rotations. Then they showed them a picture of a "1" rotated and its mirror image. The study showed that males are more interested by the mirror image. Females are equally interested by the "1" rotated and its mirror image. That means that males and females process mental rotation differently."

[skj]

Do you imagine that some conclusion about my argument can be drawn from this quotation? Because I do not see the path.

Take a look here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22496180

[yorwba]

> Two experiments showed that, as predicted, the performance of 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 192) was impaired by exposure to information that associated success in the task at hand with membership in a certain social group (e.g., "boys are good at this game"), regardless of whether the children themselves belonged to that group.

3- to 4-months old is quite a bit younger than 4 to 7 years. I doubt that any kind of group membership awareness can affect the things a baby looks at, especially when the task is so abstract. (Do you think anyone is ever indoctrinated to think that "boys do not look at rotated objects" or some such?)

The study you cite has no bearing on the effect you seem to dispute.

Edit: If it makes you feel better, the Wikipedia page on mental rotation also mentions a different experiment, where they measured reaction times of adults: "Also it was found that the male athletes in the experiment were faster than females, but male and female musicians showed no significant difference in reaction time." So apparently the right kind of training can eliminate the difference.

[skj]

I was not disputing the effect you brought up - only questioning its relevance.

The study I linked is one that seems more relevant to the topic at hand - certainly more relevant to the point I was trying to make originally.

About your edit: there is no need to try to make me feel better. Assuming you understand what makes me tick well enough to be able to do so is a common mistake (not with me specifically, but in general) that leads to the kind of cross-talk we're seeing here.

[jorgemf]

> Your two examples list physical differences, not mental ones.

Look what the experts say: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVaTc15plVs&feature=youtu.be...

If you see the whole video you hear different opinions

> you don't have to be tall to [play basketball]

Look at the height distributions of the global population and the basketball players and think twice of what you said.

> There are no biological "skills" that men might possess innately that should make them a first-choice by default

Exactly because those skill can also be in women, but some are more likely to be in men as some are more likely to be in women. I don't see anything wrong with it.