[ojnabieoot]

This is what I said:

> Specifically, [the “variability hypothesis”] is a bold scientific claim that contradicted current and 2005-era understanding of human biology, and requires far more evidence than some economist’s musing. Summers was wrong (factually and morally) to suggest otherwise and Pinker was wrong to defend it.

It is very much a Flying Spaghetti Monster problem: at this point the preponderance of evidence is that there is no inherent difference in the reasoning abilities of men and women, and that any measured difference is much more easily explained by societal factors than genetics. The default hypothesis is that there is no difference and I have not seen any convincing evidence otherwise - evidence which purports to show a difference is always tainted beyond usefulness.

Your argument is equivalent to the observation that I haven’t personally mapped out all of Earth’s orbit so how can I prove there’s no Flying Spaghetti Monster? It is not very convincing!

[hntrader]

Everyone already agrees that there aren't meaningful mean-level differences between the sexes, aside from in a small handful of personality traits or irrelevant physical traits.

You still haven't addressed why different variances (for which there is a lot of evidence) in one or more of interests/traits/skills are a nonstarter as an explanation for an outcome gap at extreme percentiles.

I'd be the first to agree that the burden of proof is on Pinker and Summers as far as advancing it from hypothesis to theory goes. But that's distinct from claiming the hypothesis itself is a nonstarter.

[pseudalopex]

Pinker talked up mean level differences for 2 paragraphs before turning to variance.

Who said anything about extreme percentiles?

[hntrader]

Summers did, read his exact words. He's not only talking about gender balance in science but about top performers specifically.

Also now that you mention it, there are mean level differences at a young age in interests (people vs things), which is also a plausible explanation for gender disparity in STEM, whether that difference is genetic or cultural or both.

[pseudalopex]

The documented median and variability differences are modest. They're enough to explain 20% women at the +4 SD level if I recall correctly. But there are too many people in STEM fields for them to be so selective.

That seems to be in line with what Summers said. Pinker talked about gender balance specifically though.

[hntrader]

> They're enough to explain 20% women at the +4 SD level if I recall correctly

That's right if we're looking at univariable distributions.

> But there are too many people in STEM fields for them to be so selective.

Actually I agree now that the variability hypothesis is insufficient to explain why there's so many more men than women that self-select into STEM.

I think a more plausible explanation is mean differences in interests (which may or may not be genetic).

The variability hypothesis can possibly help to explain things like why most chess champions are men, but it can't explain why most people that play chess in the first place are men.