Don't you think it's strange that it's seen as a 'paradoxical' outcome? The modern trend of gender-associated differences being primarily attributed to cultural influences seem unscientific at best and politically motivated at worst, especially when for many years we've had well-documented differences in the male and female brains that are clearly evident in brain-imaging studies. All else being equal, of course there are going to be significant differences in preferences between cohorts divided by gender, and such findings should not have negative consequences so long as we treat people as individuals.
I should point out that men and women are more similar than different and we can generally "run the same software at pretty much the same specs". But that's a separate discussion - the original article is looking at differences in preferences, not abilities.
I've read your source and it doesn't point to any single behaviour being government by any single brain structure.
This shouldn't be a difficult ask.
The only hard and fast link there is one where they knock off genes in female mice and get them to act more like male mice.
This is specifically not what I asked proof for.
This whole debate smacks of phrenology to me. The last 100 years in philosophy have taught us that any Turing machine can act like any other with at most a quadratic reduction in speed. It is unfortunate that neuroscience is still stuck in a 19th century mode of thinking where we mistake form for function with all the terrible results of the 20th century to show for it.
If the brain isn't a Turing machine and people aren't capable of running any software in their head they so chose we are in a very uncomfortable place where we need to start looking at eugenics seriously again. A place I definitely do not want to be in.
> An AMD and Intel cpu look very different under an xray too, but they run the same software at pretty much the same specs.
This is a pretty bad example. Although the two CPUs may be compatible, the micro architecture differs substantially, frequently causing Intel processors to excel where AMD struggles and vice versa.
Although the CPUs are capable of the same things, we might say they have different, erm, 'preferences.'
Well, the difference for the CPU analogy might be that we know exactly what to have them do, and they do exactly that (sans bugs, hah). Brains, whether it's architectural or hormonal, have many other factors that influence their workings, and aren't necessarily deterministically programmable as processors are.
I would like some evidence that under normal [0] circumstances brains which look different act different. So far it sounds like phrenology at best and racist demagoguery at worst when you compare black brains to white brains instead of female to male [1].
I don't understand how someone who would (probably) call themselves progressive can use reheated talking points from 18th century eugenicists without noticing a problem.
[0] Not someone having their frontal lobes cut off.
I don't know man, I didn't even do a racial comparison. We just know that hormones do have an effect on how your brain works and that males and females do secrete hormones at different levels. You're strawmanning a li'l bit now...
If you take for granted that brain physiology in healthy brains impacts brain capacity then you're a couple of stray neurons away from justifying Jim Crow V 2.0, now with more science.
Hormones aren't any better, back in the 60s and 70s 'negroes' were said to be in heat constantly which is why they needed to be paternalistically protected by the nice Alabama state troopers.
It seems to me that if the exact same argument can lead to results that almost everybody agrees is terrible, then there is something wrong with the argument. I don't think it is strawmanning to point that out.
For one, the relative volume of the hypothalamus nuclei maps to the gender people identify with, not their chromosomal sex [0], regardless of hormone therapy.
I'm pretty sure the cortical and white matter tract differences also map to different cognitive abilities (regardless of sex/gender, but some of them are more represented in a given sex/gender). As far as the brain is concerned, structure is function.
Also various CPUs may be able to execute the same code, yet their architecture differences will impact their relative performance in both speed and energy efficiency.
