[biglenny]

I'm curious why you think I am making this up. Testosterone is linked with higher levels of aggression. Anyone who is employed to write code and work with computers works a sedentary job.

I don't think it is a ridiculous notion that your average Googler will be nerdier or smarter than the average man. And I hope that just because "low-testosterone" is used as an insult by alt-right losers, you don't associate me with that group or characterize my comment as troll-y.

[belorn]

> Testosterone is linked with higher levels of aggression.

Testosterone is correlated to higher levels of aggression similar to how estrogen is correlated to emotional instability. It leads to false and rather crappy conclusions which misrepresent what hormones actually does to the human mind.

Modern research on testosterone show that higher levels increase the response that a man or woman has when their social status is challenged. If social status is maintained in a group through violence and aggression then those correlate to testosterone, but you can as easily have a company where productivity is the primary trait for social status and then testosterone levels will correlate to productivity when someone have their social status challenged.

From a biological perspective, this has a very basic reason. Testosterone goes up when the chance for procreation is high and it can be seen as a modulating effect that encourage the individual to hold on to the current beneficial social status. Aggression in itself is not an effective strategy for that goal and is only relevant if the local culture reward aggression.

[rishabhparikh]

I think it's a hasty jump to make assumptions about the biology of people based on their job description. Plenty of engineers I work with exercise regularly. I'm curious, do you have any links to research correlating sedentary jobs and testosterone levels?

[DoreenMichele]

You are just digging your grave deeper here. Don't assume high testosterone = must be a blue collar worker or sumpin. That's basically classist BS.

Pushing code because it is one of the highest paid professions in the world right now and exercises real power could be construed as aggressive as hell on the face of it. There's a reason people bitch about "brogrammer" culture. Even if you ignore that, desk jockeys aren't all sedentary losers. Plenty are buff and pursue Manly Man (TM) activities in their off hours, like sports, martial arts, etc.

[thereare5lights]

OP said

> They tend to be more nerdy, introverted, and less masculine(lower testosterone, less aggressive).

and

> Testosterone is linked with higher levels of aggression. Anyone who is employed to write code and work with computers works a sedentary job.

> I don't think it is a ridiculous notion that your average Googler will be nerdier or smarter than the average man. And I hope that just because "low-testosterone" is used as an insult by alt-right losers, you don't associate me with that group or characterize my comment as troll-y.

At no point did OP say:

> Don't assume high testosterone = must be a blue collar worker or sumpin.

Your statement isn't even the inverse of OP's statement. The only one that said that is you.

[DoreenMichele]

> Testosterone is linked with higher levels of aggression. Anyone who is employed to write code and work with computers works a sedentary job

How is it unreasonable to infer from this that "Obviously, high testosterone guys must work physical jobs" (often called blue collar jobs)? What jobs should I infer are the opposite of sedentary?

[thereare5lights]

How is it reasonable TO infer that? If the claim is that sedentary jobs lower testosterone, it does not follow that non-sedentary jobs raise testosterone. If A => B, the statement NOT A => NOT B is not necessarily true. That's just rudimentary logic.

[DoreenMichele]

My question is "What's the opposite of a sedentary job? Is it or is it not a physical job, AKA a blue collar job?"

I do not see where OP said sedentary jobs lower testosterone. I do not see any statement clarifying the exact nature of the presumed relationship between testosterone levels and job type.

Perhaps I missed that?

[biglenny]

You are the only one who has associated a sedentary job with being a loser or a blue class job with high testosterone. I'd appreciate if you didn't put words in my mouth.

You seem to be misconstruing a "tendency" for an "absolute blanket on all"

[DoreenMichele]

I didn't use the word loser.

[biglenny]

> Even if you ignore that, desk jockeys aren't all sedentary losers

You're right. You used the word "loserS"

[DoreenMichele]

My bad. I guess I did.

[bitL]

Google has quite a few ripped masculine employees doing dev work in Mountain View... They have to stay in good shape if only for their brains to continue working at the highest level...

[biglenny]

Yeah, I know some. I said "tendency" for a reason. People in this thread seem to think I said "every and without exception".

[bitL]

Get used to it ;-) You can still have some good discussions with people that captured all the shades of your statements properly.

[biglenny]

Yeah sry if I came off aggressive man. Everyone in this thread misinterpreting what I said probably reflects more on ME than them. I need to get better at writing...

[dang]

I take it that you didn't mean to, but you effectively trolled this thread by tossing flamebait into an inflammatory topic. Please don't do that in the future.

If you'd review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

[devmunchies]

Google has a lot of right wingers. They just are closeted about it. Doesn’t make them “losers”.

[biglenny]

Dude, how did you get "right-wingers are losers and there are none at Google" from "low-test is an insult used by ALT-right losers"? I wasn't talking about political leaning of Google employees at all.

I seriously gotta get better with my words lol. Everyone in this thread seems to be getting a different meaning out of what I said.

[DenisM]

I see that several of your comments were taken backwards and sideways, and I extend my sympathy.

Your mistake is not your wording, which is perfectly clear, it's the erroneous choice of the topic article to engage, as that defines both the audience and the discourse manner.

[devmunchies]

I misunderstood you, but I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s just some online discussion.