It was too open-ended. Inviting anyone to contribute any (mot necessarily) philosophical question is a recipe for disaster.

Start a new thread dealing with a specific philosophical query, and we can have a nice, directed discussion.

One wonders how large an impact the stereotypical existential argument of, "[blah] is just a figment of your imagination," skews more legitimate advances in philosophical discussions among friends. I know I become instantly turned off of any philosophical discussion that skews in that direction. It seems like it heads that way too often and it really loses the focus of what's actually interesting about the discussion.

It's important to observe that it's possible that nothing exists except for oneself, but it makes the pursuit of knowledge shallow when you make that the only possibility.

Is this is philosophy... http://www.timecube.com/ ?

Btw is abaraba still around?

One wonders how large an impact the stereotypical existential argument of, "[blah] is just a figment of your imagination," skews more legitimate advances in philosophical discussions among friends. I know I become instantly turned off of any philosophical discussion that skews in that direction. It seems like it heads that way too often and it really loses the focus of what's actually interesting about the discussion.

To be fair, it's relatively hard to enter into a serious philosophical discussion without dealing with solipsism in some or other form. Skepticism is a very compelling viewpoint, and certain skeptical arguments (for example, the problem of induction) are very hard to effectively refute - I personally like Bertrand Russell's equivocation that skepticism is a load of baloney, and philosophers should just get on with answering solvable questions.

Btw is abaraba still around?

Let's hope SDF doesn't discover the joys of p2p networking...

[quote name='SteveDeFacto' timestamp='1330017158' post='4915904']
[quote name='swiftcoder' timestamp='1330015438' post='4915898']
Boys fighting to catch up in maths and sciences.

This is obviously due to cultural influences. Also the figures are not loosely significant. Is there anyway you can find the actual test scores? I want to look at the bell curve.
[/quote]Yes, it could well be. That's the point being made - that your SAT scores do not show proof of biological cause.

I mean, you submit a SAT score as evidence that men tend to be better than women (which, I note, shows a 6% difference in mean, and a large overlap between genders), yet when someone shows another example, that's "obviously due to cultural influences"?

The alleged influence of "lad's mags" I would say is trivial compared to the social influence on young girls about how things like maths and sciences are "men's work".

Incidentally, the link you posted makes the claim about there being more variation among males. Whether this is true is itself a matter of debate - but it's not the same thing as saying they tend to be better (rather, you tend to get more at the higher and lower ends).
[/quote]

I could argue that for standardized testing the cultural influence in the UK on males is actually much greater than the cultural influence in the US on females or that the link which was posted is not very scholarly. However, I would much rather prove that there is a biological basis for the differences in math ability between the genders.

@SteveDeFacto : I'm not sure we could say that 'Aspies' have a low interest in social interactions. They have generally low social skills but that doesn't mean they don't want and need social interactions, like everybody. They do want to have social interactions but mostly fail in this field, and suffer about this situation. In fact, social skills have to be taught to 'Aspies', these skills don't come naturally. Thanks to psychoterapy, 'Aspies' can develop them, and have a good social life.

@SteveDeFacto : I'm not sure we could say that 'Aspies' have a low interest in social interactions. They have generally low social skills but that doesn't mean they don't want and need social interactions, like everybody. They do want to have social interactions but mostly fail in this field, and suffer about this situation. In fact, social skills have to be taught to 'Aspies', these skills don't come naturally. Thanks to psychoterapy, 'Aspies' can develop them, and have a good social life.

No, I was meaning during childhood. For example this child probably has a dominate left amygdala. On the other hand this child probably has a dominate right amygdala. After puberty all children will have a strong desire to be social but some may find it difficult since they didn't have much incentive to practice these skills before.

EDIT: On a side note the male to female ratio for autism is 4 to 1. Obviously testosterone increases the dominance of the right amygdala and when the right amygdala's dominance is too great a child will develop autism or in a less extreme case they will develop Asperger's syndrome.

I could argue that for standardized testing the cultural influence in the UK on males is actually much greater than the cultural influence in the US on females or that the link which was posted is not very scholarly. However, I would much rather prove that there is a biological basis for the differences in math ability between the genders.

Correlation doesn't imply causation.

And in particular, there is a correlation between the finger length thing, and one's sex, so this is equivalent to simply restating that there's a correlation between sex and SAT scores, which again tells us nothing about what the reason for that is.

Are you seriously tell us that your argument is: "There is a correlation between sex and blah, and there are biological differences between the sexes, therefore blah has a biological cause"?

The same argument works for the UK exam results anyway - there would be a correlation between the finger length thing, and exam results. According to you, that means that girls being better than boys at maths must have a biological basis. (Well, unless you're suggesting that for some reason in the UK, the finger length thing doesn't apply, because for some reason boys in the womb now get less testerone than girls ...)

Obviously

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Just wondering... why is this topic about pseudo-neuroscience and pseudo-psychology instead of pseudo-philosophy?

More interesting findings! After finding a correlation between gender and autism I hypothesized that intelligent parents would be more likely to have an autistic child. Apparently, this is the case.