Stanford Study Shows Enormous Difference Between Male and Female Brains, No Overlap At All (user search)

Quote from: Alben Barkley on June 25, 2024, 09:34:00 PM

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sax-on-sex/202405/ai-finds-astonishing-malefemale-differences-in-human-brain

Now THIS is interesting. Especially in the context of the trans debate. Because you can use it to argue for either side. On the one hand, you can say that there are distinct and objective biological differences between male and female brains like there are distinct and objective biological differences between other parts of our bodies, and thus the claim of a male brain in a female body or vice versa is nonsensical as you can’t isolate and neatly separate the brain from biology or the rest of the body. Anecdotally I frankly suspect there is something to do this; there are a handful of “trans women” HOI4 players for example, but literally 0 biologically female players I have EVER encountered. Almost like maybe a war game that requires you to extensively strategize a nation’s goals in a war with an intense focus on things like logistics and supply in addition to weapons like tanks/planes/guns might be more naturally appealing to male brains than female brains, regardless of how people identify. Also even right here on Atlas, it sometimes seems like there might well be more active trans users than biologically female users, in a forum that is like 99% male.

On the other hand, however, if it could be proven that the cognitive activity of trans people consistently more closely aligns with that of the opposite biological sex than their own, despite everyone else neatly conforming to one of two very distinct profiles aligning with their biological sex, I would be the first to eat crow and concede that maybe there is more to the “Wrong brain in the wrong body” theory that I thought. Unfortunately however the researchers did not examine how trans or gender non-conforming people lined up specifically. Like the author, I hope they do a follow-up that does.

Of course there are some caveats: Lots of other studies have shown in the past that there are no consistent and significant differences between male and female brains (which is why this came as a surprise to me) and as usual when you have any one study (especially one in a field like psychology that has a replication crisis and is using new technology and is inconsistent with previous findings), you have to view it in the proper context and take it with a grain of salt. Still, it has potentially interesting implications.

Furthermore, anyone who would take this as an excuse to be sexist is the biggest moron on the face of the Earth. Just because two things might be different does not automatically make one better than the other. And if anything, quite frankly it’s women who are pulling ahead lately, and there has never been any finding suggesting the slightest difference in intelligence between men and women. What psychological differences between the two have been found are subjective in value, in that both may have merits and drawbacks in different situations. Furthermore, such differences are merely generalized averages; there is still more variation within than between sexes in most regards. Although I suppose this study may challenge that to some degree in some regards.

I remember getting roasted in a few threads for suggesting that the primary reason why certain jobs (like pilots or CEOs) have a ~80/20 male/female split is because of small biological/neurological differences between men and women, rather than rampant sexism in these industries (obviously there are some cases even in the modern day of a qualified person being denied a job for sexist reasons, but this is a relatively rare phenomenon nowadays)

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