Francis J. Beckwith notes that political correctness is making it difficult for young people to distinguish between universal judgment and mere prejudice:
In class, I took an example from the textbook (Peter Kreeft’s Socratic Logic, 3.1e) and asked my students whether the following is an argument or an explanation: “Men pitch baseballs faster than women because they have more upper body muscle strength.” The right answer is that it is an explanation, because a reason is offered – “men have more upper body muscle strength” – in order to explain a fact that is not in dispute, “men pitch baseballs faster than women.” Or so I thought.
My students, like virtually the whole lot of them at Baylor, are bright and eager to learn. But like most of their peers at other institutions, they have been formed by a wider culture, including the schools they attended and the media they consume, that has taught them that universal judgments about the nature of things is inherently unjust. There is, of course, some wisdom in this, but it is only wise insofar as it depends on universal judgments.
March 21st, 2011 | 11:27 am
There’s a difference between intelligence and wisdom, too, though. It’s wise to be suspicious of explanations that propose one group’s ‘superiority’ over another is due to an inherent difference.
For example, there’s the old ‘explanation’ that women didn’t do as well as men academically because their uteruses were developed at the expense of their brains. (And, indeed, educating women risked reducing their fertility!)
Then there’s the scarcity of women chess grandmasters, ‘explained’ by an inherent difference in the intellectual and strategic capacities of men and women. Except, well, not: http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2008/12/why_are_there_so_few_female_chess_grandmasters.php
Even the gap between women and men in terms of baseball throwing isn’t entirely mediated by upper-body strength. I recall reading a study back in the late 1980′s (not available on the web that I can find) that studied boys and girls throwing baseballs. They noticed that girls who went in for throwing sports were far closer in performance to boys, even allowing for strength differences.
They went back to their study subjects, and had them throw with their non-dominant hand. Suddenly everyone was ‘throwing like a girl’. (Try it yourself sometime. Don’t do it in public if you’re thin-skinned, though.) “Throwing like a girl” essentially means “throwing like an unpracticed newbie”. It’s not inherent to the gender so much as an outcome of fewer females getting practice throwing a baseball.
So, the ‘explanation’ that “Men pitch baseballs faster than women because they have more upper body muscle strength” is only partially true.
Beckwith would probably do better to pick a different, less ambiguous example. True, the principle that “‘inherent difference’ explanations should be held to a higher scrutiny” can be applied mindlessly and reflexively… but that’s true of any intellectual principle.
March 21st, 2011 | 11:51 am
Thanks for the interesting article!
Is there any way you could link directly to it, rather than link to another link? One blog scratching another blog’s back, I guess.
March 21st, 2011 | 11:52 am
“It’s wise to be suspicious of explanations that propose one group’s ‘superiority’ over another is due to an inherent difference.”
It is not, however, wise to be impervious or even hostile to the possibility that some such difference exists, regardless of what argument or evidence is adduced to demonstrate it. I believe that’s what Beckwith is aiming for here.
March 21st, 2011 | 12:34 pm
The explanation that men pitch faster than women because men have more upper body strength is only “partially true” because of a study Ray Ingles recalls involving boys and girls?
I’m having a hard time not seeing “men=boys and women=girls” as anything other than the sort of unnecessary and erroneous extension to which Dr. Beckwith was referring in his full article.
March 21st, 2011 | 1:13 pm
How funny! I just had this same conversation with a feminist friend of a cousin, who was touting the integration of little league baseball, and the ability of girls to play on par with boys.
“Only until puberty kicks in”, I responded. Then the physiological differences between men and women assert themselves, and women can no longer compete. I went on to point out that there is no traditional men’s sport in which women can compete as equals with men, and went on to cite various examples from track and field, tennis, golf, baseball, football, boxing, wrestling, etc.
Her response was interesting. “You can cite as many statistics as you want, Stuart. But men made up the rules to all those sports, so it’s not surprising that men excel in them”.
Which was such a howler, my coffee came out my nose.
I resisted the urge to respond that no man would be caught dead participating in sports designed by and for women (rhythmic gymnastics was foremost in my mind).
March 21st, 2011 | 1:19 pm
Mr. Ingles should know by know that the plural of anecdote is not fact. We have more than enough empirical evidence by now to safely conclude that women and men perform differently in sport regardless of how level the playing field is. More than 30 years of Title ix has failed to produce a female athlete who can compete at an elite level with men. And it’s not just about upper body strength. Consider sports like golf, for instance, where all things can be made (more or less) equal. Same equipment, same courses, etc. and yet not a single woman on the PGA Tour.
To which Mr. Ingles and his ilk proclaim “who you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes…?”
The eyes have it I’m afraid.
PC dogma that demands sex based leveling and insists that obvious physiological differences (never mind functions) don’t matter obviously makes some folk as dumb as a bag of hammers.
March 21st, 2011 | 1:32 pm
Her response was interesting. “You can cite as many statistics as you want, Stuart. But men made up the rules to all those sports, so it’s not surprising that men excel in them”.
But, but, but….if there were no inherent differences why would that matter?
March 21st, 2011 | 2:42 pm
Ah, yes, speaking of leaping to generalized conclusions…
DBP – I noted the study did take strength differences into account. The age range went up beyond when, as Mr. Koehl puts it, “puberty kicks in.”
pentamom – Certainly. I was pointing out that, even in a case where there really is an inherent difference, there can be confounding factors that magnify the divergence.
David C –
We had a few centuries of no female chess grandmasters, too. Yet today we have some. More than would be expected from statistics, in fact. And that’s in a field where there don’t appear to be any inherent differences in capability.
But, again, I didn’t deny that there were any strength differences between men and women. Of course there are. I was pointing out that strength differences are not the only contributing factor. I mean, when “throwing like a girl” becomes synonymous with “throwing like an inexperienced newbie”, that indicates a rather wide difference in the amount of experience the genders get in throwing.
March 21st, 2011 | 3:08 pm
Again, for Ray Ingles to uncritically equate men with boys and women with girls is precisely the lack of distinction between extension and comprehension Dr. Beckwith is lamenting. Who said anything about how fast boys pitch in relation to girls? Such a point of refutation is raised only by extension.
If one was to “Read more…” the following quote might be found:
“The two most important terms in the class problem are ‘men’ and ‘women.’ If I were to say that all men throw a baseball faster than all women, I would be talking about the extension of the terms ‘men’ and ‘women.’ That is, I would be talking about each and every man and woman. In that case, my claim that ‘all men throw a baseball faster than all women’ is clearly false, since there are individual women who throw a baseball faster than individual men. On the other hand, when I say that ‘men pitch baseballs faster than women because they have more upper body muscle strength’ I am referring to what is comprehensively true of men and women. And in that case, it is uncontrovertibly true that men in general pitch baseballs faster than women in general.”
March 21st, 2011 | 3:17 pm
“I mean, when “throwing like a girl” becomes synonymous with “throwing like an inexperienced newbie”, that indicates a rather wide difference in the amount of experience the genders get in throwing.”
It does no such thing. It might seem like it does, but that flies in the face of the actual existence of sports programs everywhere, actively encouraged, both co-ed and for girls.
As for the female grandmasters, we *don’t* have “centuries” of a level playing field for women in chess — not a “level playing field” in all the ways that create actual, experienced female chess players in large numbers. Yes, the boards and pieces and rules have always been the same, but there was until recently quite an active social discouragement for girls in chess that is not comparable to the enthusiastic promotion of girls in sports that has existed for about the last thirty years. In fact I’d say there is still a pretty strong social suasion against girls in chess even if it isn’t deliberate — every chess organization I know of permits and encourages girls to join, but until there’s a critical mass, there just aren’t going to be that many girls interested in what they perceive as hanging out with the “geeky boys” (school clubs) and “old guys” (community clubs.)
So it’s specious to compare then enthusiastic promotion (almost over-promotion) in some cases of girls in athletics to the strong social pressure against girls in chess, just because the rules of chess haven’t changed in several centuries.
Having said that, I have my suspicions that mental hard-wiring really does favor males in chess (in Beckwith’s group sense), but that’s neither here nor there.
March 21st, 2011 | 3:56 pm
Some performance differences between men and women we fully understand. Others we can only guess at. Physical upper body strength (aka testosterone poisoning) is one of the former. I would think that would be obvious. But even in the comments section, with people who work at critical thinking, we get the same bad influence of our cultural categories. Why do we think that we necessarily improve when we replace one cultural category with another?
March 21st, 2011 | 3:58 pm
Her response was interesting. “You can cite as many statistics as you want, Stuart. But men made up the rules to all those sports, so it’s not surprising that men excel in them”.
But, but, but….if there were no inherent differences why would that matter?
yep – “you have to pretend we’re totally equal – except when I can’t keep up, at which point you have to handicap in my favor”.
March 21st, 2011 | 4:08 pm
A more accurate title would be “How Political Correctness Makes Us a DIFFERENT KIND of Dumb.” Still more accurate would be “How Political Correctness Makes Us a DIFFERENT BUT STILL BETTER KIND of Dumb.”
Who is dumber: All of those generations of learned men who believed that women were so very inferior to men that they couldn’t write, think, or lead as well as men? Or the tender young minds in Beckwith’s class who think that exceptional people are to be found so plentifully everywhere that universal judgments are probably a mask for prejudice?
Both groups fail to rigorously make the distinctions Beckwith wants to make, but the kind of error his students are making is a vast improvement over the kind of error our learned men used to make.
Belonging in a different class of dumb are those who think that areas in which women excel would be emasculating for any man to enter.
March 21st, 2011 | 5:07 pm
Hey folks,
Think: how fast does a 12 year old boy pitch in the Little League World Series? As fast as the girls pitch in the COLLEGE softball World Series. I wonder why?
Throwing like a girl? The women I see playing softball at the college level STILL throw like girls. I wonder why? Could it be — could it be the different construction of their arms? Um, could it be that pronounced angle between the forearm and the upper arm, the same angle that in the legs makes for all those blown ACL’s in college women’s basketball — because the female body is not well equipped for jumping and landing on a hard surface?
And — has anybody here ever actually watched a women’s basketball game? What is that thing they do shooting from outside — that thing called a “jump” shot, which is without a jump, and which begins with hands held out in front of the chest? With a smaller basketball, to boot? I was speaking with a sports enthusiast about this just yesterday, and he told me that the US Olympic gold medal women’s basketball team took to scrimmaging with a local YMCA team — read that sentence carefully — and managed to win almost half of their games. That’s not De Matha High School, folks. That’s not Cardinal Brennan High. That’s not any of a thousand city high schools in the country that are feeders for the big college programs. The boys at those high schools would DESTROY a local YMCA team…
And tennis … Er… Does anybody here remember a man named John Lloyd? Of course not. He was just an ordinary player on the men’s doubles tour. He was also married to Chris Evert for some years. They used to play together. She never beat him, not even once. When Bobby Riggs lost to Billie Jean King, he was 55 years old — and somehow he managed to make the sets reasonably close: 6-4, 6-4, 6-3. But that was AFTER he had beaten some of the other women’s tour’s stars, like Margaret Court (6-2, 6-1) and, if I remember, Virginia Wade and Rosie Casals. Does anybody think that a 55-year-old Martina Navratilova could even hold service, even once, against Roger Federer? How?
And before you slander the entire past by attributing to them opinions about women which were far from universal, and in many cases not even general, it would be nice to note in passing the cultural collapse in our midst, and ask with some humility whether perhaps there aren’t some things about the sexes which WE don’t see, because we don’t want to see them.
March 21st, 2011 | 5:28 pm
“Who is dumber: All of those generations of learned men who believed that women were so very inferior to men that they couldn’t write, think, or lead as well as men? Or the tender young minds in Beckwith’s class who think that exceptional people are to be found so plentifully everywhere that universal judgments are probably a mask for prejudice? ”
Hard to say. A general negative estimation of character of an unknown (or worse, a known) person based on an assumption that a possibly true thing is most likely to be believed as a result of a character defect, is pretty darn dumb.
March 21st, 2011 | 5:58 pm
DPB – Yes, I saw that Beckwith wrote,
Sure. And I was pointing out that his explanation, “because they have more upper body muscle strength”, is incomplete.
March 21st, 2011 | 6:21 pm
pentamom –
Which was my point.
We have good indications now that there must have been women back then who could have been grandmasters, but none of them made it. For centuries. Until the late 1800s or so, when women started to play a bit more. And it took a while before any women became grandmasters against men. About a century, in fact.
And, please read that article. Perhaps there are differences in native chess ability between men and women, but so far, statistically, they only account for less than 5% of the difference in ELO scores.
Meanwhile, we’ve had 30 years of Title ix, in a field where there are measurable, demonstrable, substantial differences in average strength between men and women. But even if there weren’t, it would seem we’d have to wait a century or so to see a woman compete with the elite males.
I simply noted that the social pressure regarding chess has decreased – over the course of a century or so – and now we have female grandmasters. I don’t think Title ix has completely revolutionized how society relates to sports and girls.
March 21st, 2011 | 6:22 pm
Stuart Koehl * Apparently, when a feminist is losing a rational argument, her fallback position is “Oh yeah! . . . It’s the Patriarchy!”
March 21st, 2011 | 7:22 pm
Mr. Ingles conveniently ignores the facts of life, which include the inconvenient fact that high school boys regularly beat the women’s world record in the 100-, 200- and 400 meter runs; that the men’s record for Javelin is 26% longer than the woman’s world record; or that men through a 16-lb. shot further than women throw an 8-lb shot (and high school boys throw a 12-lb shot MUCH further than women can throw an 8-lb shot). In addition, women have been unable to approach men’s performance in almost every timed athletic event, even with the benefit of East German pharmacological research. Women cannot hit a golf ball as far as a man, cannot hit a tennis ball has hard as a man, cannot throw or hit a baseball as well as a man, cannot compete with men in sports such as basketball, football, soccer, lacrosse, ice hockey or field hockey. Whenever they have tried to do so the results have been catastrophic for women.
Martina Navatrilova, for instance, used to train against a male player ranked (I believe) No.350 in the world; she never won a set from him. A women’s Div. 1 NCAA Conference Champion basketball team scrimmaged against their schools Division C men’s team; the women’s coach called it off after fifteen minutes, because her women were getting creamed.
Statistical analysis of almost any sport shows women made proportionally greater gains in performance than men over the past several decades, which reflects both greater interest and opportunity (to say nothing of resources devoted) to women’s sport. Men continued to improve over that time, but at a slower rate. Recently, it would seem that women also are reaching the limits of human physiology: the curve has flattened, and now they are improving no faster than men. We would therefore seem to be reaching a point where the delta between men and women will become stable. Now it’s just a matter of anatomy: women will never close the gap.
Human physical capabilities are distributed along a bell curve, but the bell curves for men and women have different centers. The curves overlap, but it’s the right hand (high athletic ability) end of the women’s curve that overlaps the left hand (low athletic ability) end of the male curve. Basically, an average male athlete is as good as the best female athlete in a particular sport.
Except, of course, for sports that award points for “artistic merit”.
March 21st, 2011 | 7:35 pm
“testosterone poisoning”
Interesting use of the word ‘poisoning’ Mike.
March 21st, 2011 | 8:12 pm
Michael- if you think that everyone is so much smarter today you are naive. The Larry Summers affairs tells you all you need to know: we have not abandonded dogma and orthodoxy and embraced ‘free-thought’; instead, we simply have a new orthodoxy, and heretics are punished. Political correctness is an orthodoxy that prevents the truth from being spoken, regardless of the evidence that supports it.
March 21st, 2011 | 9:39 pm
“I was pointing out that his explanation, ‘because they have more upper body muscle strength’, is incomplete.”
By referencing your memory of a study you cannot produce that allows you to draw an inapt comparison of men to boys and women to girls.
Again, this is precisely Beckwith’s point. Disagree with his thesis, if you’d like. Condemn the conceit of universal judgements. But when you critique an article about the failure to distinguish between “a term’s comprehension and a term’s extension” through an argument of extension, it’s just silly.
Political Correctness may or may not make people dumb, but it sure makes some obtuse.
March 21st, 2011 | 10:00 pm
Stuart Koehl –
Yeah, like where I said “there are measurable, demonstrable, substantial differences in average strength between men and women”.
March 21st, 2011 | 10:05 pm
Mr. Ingles conveniently ignores the facts of life
It is true that women were denied the opportunity to develop various skills that women are, in fact, capable of developing.
Up until this century – and toward the end of it, no less – the human race focused on what needed to be done.
There was no advantage in teaching a woman chess, because women are not as suited as men to being tactical and strategic leaders.
Even putting aside all the arguments about innate abilities, for a woman to be a general on a battlefield requires that she give up her chance to be a mother, and that is just not an effective deployment of resources.
So what would be the point of teaching women how to play chess?
Even today – after all the “liberation” – it remains true that success for a woman is tied up with being able to make a successful alliance with a man. Those who can do better than those who can’t, and what is more important, those who can pass significant advantages to their offspring.
It is an increasingly small subset of women who complain about not being granted additional “handicapping” resources so that they may compete solo in the “world of life” event. Most women are smart enough to figure out that the real competition – for men as well as for women – is a partners event, not a solo competition.
And for those who think partnership automatically means “oppression” or “subjugation”, to that I say – that is why women have traditionally paid so much attention to the question of what to look for when choosing a mate: because it matters a lot.
March 21st, 2011 | 10:56 pm
One sport—maybe the one and only—in which women and men compete against each other is Eventing. It’s an equestrian sport, and comprises three parts (dressage, cross country and show jumping). I don’t think there is any advantage to being a man or woman and the 2008 Olympics had mixed results:
http://www.regardinghorses.com/2008/08/21/2008-olympic-equestrian-medal-winners/
March 21st, 2011 | 11:10 pm
And then there is the tragic side. From a doctor who tried to persuade a sixteen-year-old that her violent lover was bad news:
Full essay here:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_1_oh_to_be.html
March 22nd, 2011 | 7:08 am
“One sport—maybe the one and only—in which women and men compete against each other is Eventing. It’s an equestrian sport, and comprises three parts (dressage, cross country and show jumping).”
This is true, mainly because:
(a) Eventing is a team sport, the team consisting of horse and rider; how much credit belongs to the equine partner, and how much to the human, is a source of much debate; and
(b) In riding, size is not much of a benefit (otherwise, jockeys would be much bigger), and upper body strength is not nearly as important as strong thighs and calves, and a profound understanding of one’s horse.
March 22nd, 2011 | 8:54 am
Blake –
Dang it, I need a new program or playbill or something. I thought it was the “Darwinists” who were the ones claiming reproduction was the only purpose humans could have.
March 22nd, 2011 | 9:13 am
“testosterone poisoning”
Interesting use of the word ‘poisoning’ Mike.
Pastor Spomer,
I gather you don’t read much. “Testosterone poisoning” is a phrase used by the feminist left to describe male differences from females, particularly that males are more aggressive than females. Anything that makes males, on average, better than females is either wrong or bad to this crowd.
Testosterone is also a chemical with major responsibility for the physical differences. It is a steroid, a natural one, whose evolutionary purpose, among others, appears to be to make men stronger than women. Those who would reject the obvious evidence provided above for that difference as a matter of training just might accept something a little more basic
March 22nd, 2011 | 9:18 am
“But even if there weren’t, it would seem we’d have to wait a century or so to see a woman compete with the elite males.”
Can you explain this? When it only takes 20 years for a girl to grow up, why is it that 30 years of consistent promotion of women in sports, sometimes even at the expense of men, is not sufficient to allow us to judge?
March 22nd, 2011 | 9:23 am
“I don’t think Title ix has completely revolutionized how society relates to sports and girls.”
Ah, I see now what you mean. Well, no, it hasn’t completely revolutionized it, but it has altered it to the extent that there any actual little girls lacking access to, and public encouragement of, participation in sports, is little more than statistical noise. You can’t tell me there is any significant number of girls who don’t participate in sports because they believe sports isn’t cool for girls, the way it is in chess. And because of Title IX, any lack of funding in impoverished situations is matched by, or actually less of a problem than, underfunding of boys in the same situation.
March 22nd, 2011 | 9:32 am
Count me in as an advocate for a different kind of dumb.
When women of today outperform men of previous generations, it’s not just upper body strength, but training, nutrition, and other factors.
The point of liberation is not to create a level playing field by any performance standard, but to accept that people are free to pursue vocations and avocations as their talents, desire, and opportunity permits. The point is equal opportunity, not equal performance.
Conservatives are free to generalize to salve their feelings if they wish, but the real truth is that only most male athletes outperform all women. To translate to a “dumber” sports analogy: most BCS football teams are better than all FCS teams. But they don’t win every game played between the two.
I suggest Mr Beckwith return to school for some refinement in logic.
March 22nd, 2011 | 10:55 am
“But they don’t win every game played between the two.”
I’m not sure what that, or anything you said in your comment, is intended to refute.
March 22nd, 2011 | 11:15 am
Another commenter who either didn’t “Read more…” or oddly wanted to prove Beckwith’s point through a display of misdirected criticism.
March 22nd, 2011 | 11:39 am
Tony Esolen,
“And before you slander the entire past by attributing to them opinions about women which were far from universal, and in many cases not even general, it would be nice to note in passing the cultural collapse in our midst, and ask with some humility whether perhaps there aren’t some things about the sexes which WE don’t see, because we don’t want to see them”
No. The opinions about women were pretty universal. Every culture has had its own brand of sexism, some of them uglier and more wide ranging than others. I don’t believe that teaching kids that boys really can throw a baseball faster than girls is going to reverse our cultural collapse. In fact, I don’t think our cultural collapse has anything at all to do with our understanding of the differences between men and women. There are real differences, but they’re not what previous generations thought, and they are not the key to solving our problems.
—
Pentamom,
“A general negative estimation of character of an unknown (or worse, a known) person based on an assumption that a possibly true thing is most likely to be believed as a result of a character defect, is pretty darn dumb”
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. Please explain.
—
Mike P,
“if you think that everyone is so much smarter today you are naive.”
I don’t think we’re smarter. I think most people in every age are “dumb,” to use Carter’s term. Most people are not willing to think with much complexity, but young people are usually the most idealistic and the least complex thinkers. One of the functions of good education is to teach them how to think more complexly.
Beckwith is upset that students think all universal judgments are prejudiced. Students are making a mistake to think so, but I’d rather they make that mistake than make the mistake my parents were taught when they learned that prejudices against women, blacks, and Catholics were really universal judgments.
“The Larry Summers affairs tells you all you need to know: we have not abandonded dogma and orthodoxy and embraced ‘free-thought’; instead, we simply have a new orthodoxy, and heretics are punished.”
I don’t think humans are capable of abandoning dogma, but some dogmas are better than others. People were wrong to come down so hard on Summers, but I’d rather live in a society that erroneously believes women are capable of anything than live in a society that erroneously believes that women are capable of only a few things.
By the way, Summers’ punishment for his “heresy” didn’t prevent him from being asked to join the Obama administration. Old-time heretics got a rather stiffer punishment.
March 22nd, 2011 | 11:41 am
@Todd,
“The point is equal opportunity, not equal performance.”
Then we’ve failed as Title IX has forced the closing of many lesser male sports programs while many female programs are under-subscribed. The sword is too dull to cleave as needed.
“Conservatives are free to generalize to salve their feelings if they wish”
Direct personal prejudice raises its head.
Beckwith’s point holds. “Men are stronger than women”, but not “All men are stronger than all women.” The first is a biological fact that current cultural blinders prevent collegiate students (and not a small number of professional adults) from seeing. If we can’t see the truth for our culture then we are no better than the 100-year old males we like to put down. It was always thus.
March 22nd, 2011 | 11:48 am
Mike Melendez –
Actually, in nature, the species where the males tend to be larger than the females are the polygamous ones. And the degree of the size difference corresponds pretty linearly with how polygamous relations are, which corresponds directly with how much competition for mates males face. (E.g. the walrus…)
Based only on the size difference, humans would be expected to be moderately polygamous.
It would seem the testosterone isn’t so much to “make men stronger than women” as to make men stronger, or at least able to compete with, other men. The fact that in so doing it makes men stronger than women would then be a side effect.
March 22nd, 2011 | 12:02 pm
DBP –
I said I can’t find the study on the web. That doesn’t mean I can’t find references to this non-imaginary study:
http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-girls-cant-throw.html
Would you be willing to take some video of yourself throwing a baseball, first with your dominant hand, and then with the other? We can host it on my youtube channel if you don’t have one…
I didn’t dispute the principle, I criticized Beckwith’s example. Just so we’re clear, are you prepared to say that the difference in throwing speed between adult females and males is entirely due to strength, and differences in training have nothing to do with it in the real world?
March 22nd, 2011 | 1:37 pm
#1, what I am prepared to say is immaterial to the point. You have taken an article about a growing lack of distinction between comprehension and extension and criticized it through uncritical (and inapt) extension, thereby supporting and strengthening Beckwith’s actual point.
#2, sure I’d be happy to argue that the substantial difference in pitching velocity between the sexes (not between individual men and women but generally between the sexes) has nothing to do with training–a variable–and everything to do with physical differences–a constant.
Feel free to publish the link to your Youtube channel chronicling your ongoing research to test whatever difference may persist in non-dominant hand pitching velocity between men as a group and women as a group who receive equal training.
As my personal pitching ability would be a matter of extension to the argument, I decline to be the sole subject of your experiment. But should you achieve a sufficiently random and statistically significant number of test subjects, I’d be happy to participate.
For the love of knowledge, of course.
March 22nd, 2011 | 2:40 pm
DPB – I’m afraid you are missing the distinction.
Beckwith points out that saying ‘men throw baseballs faster than women’ is comprehensive but not extensive. So far so good – and if you can find an example of me denying this point, I’d be interested to see it.
But Beckwith’s other point was the difference between an ‘explanation’ and an ‘argument’. His statement wasn’t just ‘men throw baseballs faster than women’. It was ‘men throw baseballs faster than women because men have greater upper arm strength.’
I didn’t deny that men on average throw baseballs faster than women. (Go back and check. I’ll wait.)
I didn’t deny that upper-body strength made a large contribution to this difference. (Again, go back and check. I’ll still be here.)
What I pointed out was that upper-body strength is not the only contributing factor. As an explanation, Beckwith’s example is incomplete. As I said at the start, “Beckwith would probably do better to pick a different, less ambiguous example.”
March 22nd, 2011 | 2:53 pm
Political Correctness does make some/many people really dumb.
To be transparent, Political Correctness does make Liberals really dumb. (A reasonable case could be made that it makes Liberals even dumber than they already are for choosing to be liberal, but that’s another debate entirely.)
But to illustrate his general thesis, why did Dr. Beckwith choose the disparity in sports ability between men and women to make his point?
Was it a good choice by him to illustrate the dumbness-making of Political Correctness?
Or was it a dumb choice by him to illustrate the dumbness-making of Political Correctness?
March 22nd, 2011 | 4:06 pm
Dang it, I need a new program or playbill or something. I thought it was the “Darwinists” who were the ones claiming reproduction was the only purpose humans could have.
Technology has enabled us to raise our expectations: thanks to electricity, we are now able to do more – and can reasonably expect to achieve more within our lifetime – than was the case a century or three ago.
But to go back and bitterly lament how women were deprived of opportunities until recently seems supremely ignorant to me.
And the feminist notion of “having it all” is also extremely ignorant: if you intend to have a child, you and especially the child are better off if you make a permanent and enduring bond with the child’s other parent.
Technology has increased what we can look forward to within our lifetimes, but it has not granted us the ability to reshape reality itself. There are still limits, and costs, and things that just can’t be done. (As much as some of us really want to deny that fact.)
March 22nd, 2011 | 4:09 pm
“What I pointed out was that upper-body strength is not the only contributing factor.”
I’ll try once more.
Beckwith: “Men pitch baseballs faster than women because they have more upper body muscle strength.” This is an EXPLANATION rather than an ARGUMENT because it explains the reason why men throw faster than women, a fact which is (ostensibly) not in dispute.
The resulting problem he encountered in attempting to teach this was a reflexive “Nuh-uh” from his students who had trouble agreeing with a fact they “felt” was prejudicial.
They “feel” this way because the ability to make universal judgments about the nature of things (especially people) is no longer taught–it is unseemly and misguided at best and maliciously wrong at worst.
“But I know women who pitch way faster than most guys,” one might be heard to say. To that EXTENSION (dealing with a small subset of the issue rather than COMPREHENSIVELY evaluating a whole) I would add your assertion that girls who play throwing sports throw better than girls who do not and that neither girls nor boys throw well with their (untrained) non-dominant hand.
Those are interesting pieces of data, for sure. Yet neither offers any mitigation or produce ambiguity toward his specific example of a Socratic argument: that the difference in throwing velocity between the sexes is due to the difference in upper body strength.
I followed your links (I’m not sure they say what you think they say), and stand by my earlier statements. You are disputing his example of an explanation through extension (children to adults, dominant to non-dominant) rather than dealing with it comprehensively. Which is really his overall point, specific example aside.
Just for fun, though, when you wrote “They noticed that girls who went in for throwing sports were far closer in performance to boys, even allowing for strength differences,” what, precisely, was the cause of that persistent, though reduced, difference? Because the vague qualifier “far closer” speaks volumes.
No one has argued that training can’t make a positive difference in anyone’s ability to throw. In disputing Beckwith’s example of pitching, however, you have now asserted the argument that upper body strength is a less than satisfactory reason for the velocity difference between the sexes. Your rationale and argument share far more with the reflexive Nuh-uh of Beckwith’s students than actually engaging Beckwith’s premise. And round and round we go.
Should you wish to continue the argument over Dr. Beckwith’s choice of example, I’d ask that you offer something other than your extrapolation of a study you recall involving children—say a study that demonstrates a persistent, statistically insignificant difference between the pitch speed of adult men (generally) and adult women (generally) when using their non-dominant arms, after receiving training, or whatever variable control you wish to apply.
Until then, your assertion is no more than that; an assertion. And other than a source of curious speculation, it ought to carry weight similar to those who would dispute the explanation because “it’s mean” or “but I knew this girl once who…”
March 22nd, 2011 | 4:10 pm
When women of today outperform men of previous generations, it’s not just upper body strength, but training, nutrition, and other factors.
Or it could be the result of two, coming up on three, generations of open misandry?
Reallocating resources to “handicap” a preferred group does have a negative effect on more than just the group being propped up.
March 22nd, 2011 | 7:38 pm
“When women of today outperform men of previous generations, it’s not just upper body strength, but training, nutrition, and other factors.”
You have to go really, really far back for that. In the 100-meter dash, for instance, the current women’s world record is 10.49 seconds, set by Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988. That time was beaten (10.40 seconds) by Charles Paddock in 1921.
In other words, on the basis of time alone, women would seem to be some 67 years behind men. Moreover, as the women’s world record has held for some 23 years, it would seem that, in this event, at least, women have run up against the wall.
In constrast, the current men’s record, held by Usain Bolt of Jamaica, is 9.58 seconds, 0.91 seconds faster than the women’s record. Moreover, that record was set in 2009. Since 1988, the year the women’s record was set, the men’s record time has dropped from 9.93 seconds to 9.58 seconds, an improvement of 0.35 seconds, or 4%. While men continue to make incremental improvements, women’s performance has remained static, despite improvements in nutrition, equipment and training.
March 23rd, 2011 | 1:31 am
Mike, regarding, “Then we’ve failed as Title IX has forced the closing of many lesser male sports programs while many female programs are under-subscribed.”
Actually, the problem is more with the glut of scholarships given in BCS football. Knock football out of the picture, and boom: 88 scholarship athletes in at least four sports.
The main reason men’s sports are squeezed out is the gluttony of BCS football coaches. An NFL roster is 53 players, plus a practice squad. Limit football to 63 scholarship athletes and you save baseball.
The other thing is that judging college athletics by the total number of scholarships is a presumption on the part of athletic directors. It’s never been tested in court.
Stuart, instead of sprinting, compare swimming and marathon records. More like 40 years. Women are closer to men in endurance athletics.
In sum the statement, “Men pitch baseballs faster than women because they have more upper body muscle strength,” is not only dumb, but needlessly provocative.
The skill sets of men and women are not mutually exclusive. Today the strongest women will always outperform most men. And of course, the best men will outperform every woman.
Mr Beckwith could have more accurately said, “Among established baseball athletes, men pitch baseballs faster than women because they have more upper body muscle strength.” And we could quibble about opportunity. But he would in general have been correct.
If you want to wade into these kinds of arguments, it’s better not to be dumb.
March 23rd, 2011 | 7:21 am
“The skill sets of men and women are not mutually exclusive. Today the strongest women will always outperform most men. And of course, the best men will outperform every woman.”
As I said, the right hand end of the female physical ability bell curve overlaps the left hand end of the male physical ability bell curve, so it would be more correct to say that the average male athlete will outperform the best female athlete in the same sport. I think I provided more than enough data to show that: male high school athletes routinely post better times in most races than elite female athletes. High school javelin throwers and shot putters routinely outdistance elite female javeliners and shot putters (despite women throwing a lighter shot).
You can’t argue with actuals, as an employer of mine used to say about people who wanted to elevate their feelings above statistics.
March 23rd, 2011 | 9:22 am
Blake –
What you said was:
Now, what if a woman (a) had the talent to be a general, and (b) wanted to? Barring some extremely improbable circumstances, she would have to choose between being a general and being a mother, certainly.
But must everyone settle themselves into the most “effective deployment of resources”? And who decides what an “effective deployment of resources” is? (“Effective” for what?) I mean, does the Party get to pick your lot in life?
(Hey… didn’t women choose between being a mother and entering religious orders? Was that an “effective deployment of resources”? Hmmm… would you have magnanimously allowed nuns to learn chess, had they chosen to?)
I’m not sure who this is addressed to. I didn’t bring it up, or argue about it.
March 23rd, 2011 | 9:26 am
DPB –
I added some emphasis above. Which is it again, an explanation or an argument? I think we need to settle that before we can proceed.
March 23rd, 2011 | 12:47 pm
“(I)t would be more correct to say that the average male athlete will outperform the best female athlete in the same sport.”
In some sports. Chess was cited in a few posts above.
The best female chess player, Judit Polgar, at her peak, was #9 in the world, clearly above the average chess grandmaster.
“Which is it again, an explanation or an argument?”
It might be a poor argument. But it’s definitely an opinion, mainly because of the way it has been phrased.
March 23rd, 2011 | 1:19 pm
“Now, what if a woman (a) had the talent to be a general, and (b) wanted to? Barring some extremely improbable circumstances, she would have to choose between being a general and being a mother, certainly.”
Now you are trespassing into my specialty. Your first hypothetical “what if a woman had the talent to be a general” begs the question of what those talents are, and whether women actually have them. In the past, the answer would almost certainly be “no”, since the first requirement of generalship was the ability to fight in battle, and, no, women simply did not have the physical capability to do that.
Beyond that, a general also had to have the ability to inspire and lead men. He did that in part by being a better warrior than anyone else, and also by being a charismatic leader. The nature of warrior bands is such that no self-respecting warrior would take orders from a woman–it would demean him in his own eyes and those of his companions.
Now, through history, there have been women who have led armies–but not as generals. Deborah, for instance, was a judge of Israel, but she did not lead the tribes against the Canaanites, she worked through a man, Barak.
Aethelflaed, the Lady of the Mercians (and daughter of Alfred the Great), likewise led the armies of Mercia (and later Wessex) against the Vikings, and was even known to don armor–but never led the Fyrd in battle; she left that to her husband Athelred, and to his generals.
Joan of Arc never actually led the French armies (and her personal interventions were usually disastrous), but was an inspirational figurehead who relied on men like Gilles de Rais to formulate strategy and to lead the troops.
Now, today, there are two different types of general officer, which might be defined as the “combat leader” and the “military manager”.
I find it hard to see how a woman could become the first, insofar as doing so requires a steady climb through the ranks in the combat arms, and, for a variety of very good reasons, no modern army has ever allowed women to serve directly in combat (the two exceptions, the Red Army of 1941-42, and the Israeli Palmach of 1947-48, were both ideologically egalitarian, yet even they removed women from combat roles very quickly after the experiment began, for the one reason that dominates all military logic–it did not work). Without a proven record of leading men in battle at the squad, platoon, company and battalion level, it would be highly improbable for a woman to be given command of a combat brigade–or that any officer would follow her.
Now, there are many female general officers who fall into the category of “military manager”, because a military manager is, well, a manager who happens to wear a military uniform. He is, in most regards, just a civilian who happens to work in the military, and his life bears little resemblance to that of the combat soldier (ask any combat soldier). Trouble comes when suddenly military managers find themselves thrust into positions that require them to make military decisions, and here both male and female military managers tend to fall apart–witness the fate of BGEN Janet Karpinksi, who ran the military prison at Abu Ghraib.
So, at the end of the day, the example given is specious because women cannot meet the criteria for (a) and the matter of (b) is utterly irrelevant–there are plenty of men who have the talent to be generals, and the desire to be generals, but who never make general. In peacetime, at least, the tendency is against promoting men with real talent to flag rank, because the nature of that talent renders them poor fits for bureaucratic peacetime armies.
March 24th, 2011 | 6:26 am
Blake –
Technology has enabled us to raise our expectations: thanks to electricity, we are now able to do more – and can reasonably expect to achieve more within our lifetime – than was the case a century or three ago.
What you said was:
Even putting aside all the arguments about innate abilities, for a woman to be a general on a battlefield requires that she give up her chance to be a mother, and that is just not an effective deployment of resources.
Now, what if a woman (a) had the talent to be a general, and (b) wanted to? Barring some extremely improbable circumstances, she would have to choose between being a general and being a mother, certainly.
Ultimately, it is only comfortable, sedate, and sheltered societies that really have the luxury of caring at all about whether someone “wants to” be something.
Until very recently (historically speaking), what you would “be” when you grew up was determined by what your father was. Even today, for all our angst about “choosing” what we want to be (a task that most young people don’t seem to be particularly good at, I might add), there is not much reason to believe that a young person’s emotional impulses or “whims” are the best way to determine how human resources should be allocated.
In other words, in the real world, the question of whether a woman feels the need to lead an army really matters much less than whether the army feels the need to be led by that particular woman.
March 24th, 2011 | 3:33 pm
Blake –
Huh. I’d phrase that the other way around. The cultures that best practice social mobility, merit-based rewards rather than inheritance and titles, and so forth are the ones that tend to get prosperous enough to afford luxuries.
Allocated to what purpose? Apparently the Party does get to pick your lot in life. (Out of curiosity, what caste do you picture yourself, Blake?)
March 25th, 2011 | 12:52 am
Ultimately, it is only comfortable, sedate, and sheltered societies that really have the luxury of caring at all about whether someone “wants to” be something.
Huh. I’d phrase that the other way around. The cultures that best practice social mobility, merit-based rewards rather than inheritance and titles, and so forth are the ones that tend to get prosperous enough to afford luxuries.
Like in the USA, where the ruling classes all go to the same colleges – and if you’re not enrolled in the “right” preschool by 18 months of age, it’s too late for you?
March 25th, 2011 | 11:11 am
“In some sports. Chess was cited in a few posts above.”
Chess is a wonderful and worthy game.
It is not a sport by any stretch of the imagination.
Since this entire discussion has revolved not around various strengths and abilities, but purely physical factors, chess is entirely irrelevant to anything anyone has said.
March 25th, 2011 | 1:15 pm
“It is not a sport by any stretch of the imagination.”
It is, the way they played it in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”.
March 25th, 2011 | 1:18 pm
“Huh. I’d phrase that the other way around. The cultures that best practice social mobility, merit-based rewards rather than inheritance and titles, and so forth are the ones that tend to get prosperous enough to afford luxuries.”
I’ll take aristocracy over unbridled meritocracy any day. The aristocrat knows he’s got his wealth and privilege by accident of birth and nothing else, and as a result, tends to develop a sense of noblesse oblige to justify what he has. On the other hand, in the meritocracy, those who rise to the top can pretend they have done so by virtue of their own innate superiority–they have the brains, the drive and the imagination to climb the dungheap. And as a result, they feel no obligation to anybody and treat those below them with contempt.
March 25th, 2011 | 1:40 pm
Gee, now that you mention it, I’m not thrilled with the reduction of social and economic mobility that the US has seen in the last few decades. And this isn’t a new thing – see the first link in the first comment here:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/03/14/too-much-deficit-not-enough-rich-people/
But – relative to just about anywhere else on this planet, now and through history – the US has been for most of its history more socially-mobile and merit-based than anywhere else. How’s that worked out for prosperity?
Another example is the Roman empire. Nowhere near a freewheeling as the US, but a sight better than their contemporaries. And they did pretty well.
Now, can we get back to how you plan to allocate human resources again? Oddly, that question remains unanswered…
March 25th, 2011 | 1:48 pm
Stuart Koehl –
Wait… why are you comparing ‘aristocracy’ and ‘unbridled meritocracy’? Why aren’t you comparing ‘unbridled meritocracy’ to unbridled aristocracy?
I haven’t noticed ‘tendency’ toward noblesse oblige on the part of Brahmins toward the ‘untouchables’, for example.
I will concede that the single virtue of an inherited rulership is that it can – once in a great while – produce a reluctant ruler. However, I haven’t come across a regular pattern of such when looking over history.
March 25th, 2011 | 2:06 pm
pentamom – Sorry, I missed your earlier question in the back-and-forth.
It can take – as a very rough average – thirty years for a person to become a serious grandmaster, not a huge difference from when someone hits their athletic peak.
And I’ve been arguing that, from all the data we have, if there’s a difference in innate chess ability between women and men, it’s on the order of 4% or so.
Now, the very first moves I know of to seriously discuss women and chess were toward the end of the 1800s. It wasn’t until the end of the 1900s that a woman actually became a grandmaster.
So… even in a case where there’s little if any measurable difference in actual aptitude, it took a long time for women to actually become serious competitors. You note that there is still some social stigma attached to women playing chess, which is a factor, of course, but… well, see below.
Now – again, to some people’s apparent surprise – I’ve agreed that when it comes to physical sports men have a decided advantage. True, Title IX more-or-less eliminates any academic or monetary disincentives for women, but there’s still some social stigma for girls being ‘jocks’.
But even if men weren’t on average substantially stronger than women, we have direct evidence that social pressure and inertia can delay women competing with men on an equal footing. A century of lag time has been observed.
Is that any clearer? Untangling the social issues from the physical differences isn’t quite as simple as looking at the record times. (And regarding Title IX – I thought the case was that social norms can’t be just flipped in a heartbeat based on changes in law?)
March 25th, 2011 | 9:28 pm
I’ll take aristocracy over unbridled meritocracy any day.
Well, I wouldn’t, but the problem is, how to keep a meritocracy merit-based?
Capitalism outperforms socialism, economically. And capitalism promotes this performance by offering real advantages to those who perform. People are motivated by the chance to send their kids to better schools, or otherwise gain some advantage. This motivates ambitious people into economic performance. If you take away the reward, you take away the incentive.
This is how come our “meritocracy” here in the USA now has a smaller “upward mobility” between social classes than some European countries that actively protect the “merit” in the “meritocracy”. But in doing so, those European nations make a choice – their most ambitious citizens are going to want to live in a place where their economic contributions will be rewarded, and so your economy will do without the assets (tangible and intangible) that they take with them when they migrate.
Whether it is possible to protect true meritocracy without sacrificing economic incentive is a fascinating question (one I wish I knew the answer to).
Another interesting thing to consider is that meritocracy and “choice” (going back to the original point from which the discussion started) are not always comfortable together.
Some careers are such that either you can or you cannot perform the task correctly. Either you can fix the car’s transmission or you can’t. In these professions, it is possible to wait until you are 18 or 21 before deciding to train in that field, without necessarily losing competitive advantage over rivals.
But other professions are such that the child who begins training early has a real advantage over the late-starting adult.
If we value meritocracy, then wouldn’t we have an obligation to identify the sorts of careers that require early training, and identify the students who are naturally suited to such careers?
March 26th, 2011 | 7:36 pm
But – relative to just about anywhere else on this planet, now and through history – the US has been for most of its history more socially-mobile and merit-based than anywhere else.
Not through history.
That sort of social mobility and meritocracy are found in all frontier economies.
March 26th, 2011 | 7:59 pm
Now, can we get back to how you plan to allocate human resources again? Oddly, that question remains unanswered…
I believe in democracy. And individuals organizing themselves into economic units as they please.
As opposed to a central planned economy.
Let every family decide for themselves how to allocate their resources.
The ones too far to the right will not thrive, because they will not offer enough opportunity and kids who wish more autonomy will leave – or escape.
The ones too far to the left will not thrive, because they have no social cohesion, too many takers and nobody volunteering to do the giving. (At this point, of course, in reality, if history – or current events – is any guide, they will say “hey, why don’t we tell the government to take what that family over there has, and then establish that the government ought to spend it on us! Let’s set up a central economic government, so that we can be as selfish as we like toward our family members, and yet we can still enjoy being taken care of in our old age. Sounds good! Let’s get their money and live on THAT!”)
I believe that political competition in the “marketplace of ideas” is as important as economic competition.
And that economic and political events provide a natural “checks and balances” against each other.
If you go too far in the “political” direction you create an economic problem. Redirecting resources away from economic producers to mollify political demands (however legitimate or corrupt those political demands may be) has a stagnating effect on an economy.
If you go too far in the “economic” direction you start having political problems (I’m thinking of America’s history, late 19th-early 20th century, with all the anarchists, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and the formation of unions).
The important thing IMO is that the system must be protected against corruption and misinformation.
For instance, the whole “political correctness” thing is of concern because, while it started out being about what is “fair”, and thrived on exposing the truth, it degenerated into its own opposite or parody: it now relies on hiding the truth, usually by focusing intensely on the feelings, needs, or desires of what the person with the “protected” identity wants/needs/ought to be entitled to, but ruthlessly punishes anyone who attempts to balance out that equation by focusing equal attention on what someone else will lose.
“Political correctness” is all about stopping the free flow of information necessary to keep the system healthy. It is a form of corruption.
March 28th, 2011 | 9:07 am
“As opposed to a central planned economy.”
We’ve had a central planned economy for years. I’m assuming you’re saying that propping up corporations is a bad idea, and that the toxic and illegal choices of B of A and others should have led to their economic demise, and probably prison terms for people currently inhabiting Treasury.
I’m happy and interested to switch the topic from Mr Beckwith’s inaccuracies. Just want to be sure you’re really ready to talk about real misinformation and corruption.
March 28th, 2011 | 9:10 am
Blake –
Hear, hear! As in so many engineering optimization problems, we may have to settle for a balance where none of the desirables are maximized.
One of the reasons I make sure to visit websites that don’t agree with my point of view.
I’m not a fan of ‘political correctness’, either. But defense of orthodoxy is hardly limited just to the left.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact