
Brain research on boys’ preference for video games and girls’ for social media - bookofjoe
https://www.wsj.com/articles/girls-vs-boys-brain-differences-might-explain-tech-behaviors-11569317402
======
dang
If you comment in this thread, please stick to the specifics of the article.

This thread got bogged down on its first go, but the article is interesting
enough to deserve a second chance.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/YRQwS](http://archive.is/YRQwS)

~~~
jader201
FWIW, that link does some weird stuff to the charts for me.

------
ivanhoe
IMHO a big part of "controversy" surrounding the idea of purely biological
male vs. female predispositions comes from people not really understanding how
statistics work. People feel that results like this are somehow limiting to
them individually so they argue emotionally against it, but statistics don't
really deal with the individual outcomes. Statistical researches are never
about you, me or any single individual. Just because on average sexes seem to
prefer different things doesn't mean that every and single person of that sex
has to feel that way, there will always be a spectrum of different results on
the individual level. It's like saying that males are taller than females,
that doesn't imply that there's no short men, or very tall women, we all know
that there's a lot of them.

Now, that said, I personally don't buy neither just "everything is predefined
by biology", nor the "the society shapes everything" positions, both seem like
crude over-simplifications.

~~~
lostjohnny
And yet...

I've read this[1] yesterday on a complete unrelated topic, and I must say that
"I don't buy" it's another form of not understanding statistics.

Biology is what it is and controls major aspects of our lives.

If you can be stronger of some of the biological instincts, good, but
statistically biology always wins.

We can say for example that "women prefer laudanum, men prefer opium and
pronstitues" is 100% a social construction.

"Women are better at social activities while men are better at competitive
activities" much less so.

> Like most psychologists who study personality, Peterson believes there are
> five core personality traits—extraversion, agreeableness, openness,
> conscientiousness and neuroticism—and that these traits are universal across
> most cultures. The taxonomy is also gendered. For example, women tend to be
> more agreeable than men. The traits have both biological and cultural
> origins and, as Peterson is fond of saying, the biological factors
> __maximize in places—like Scandinavia—that have strenuously tried to flatten
> out the cultural differences __. Biology is, therefore, in a sense,
> __destiny __, no matter how much people may want to deny it. To his mind,
> arguing that gender is a social construct or a kind of performance or—as the
> Ontario Human Rights Code says—an individual’s subjective experience is just
> wrong. “It’s not an alternative hypothesis,” Peterson says. “It’s an
> incorrect hypothesis.

\-- Jordan Bernt Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist and a professor
of psychology at the University of Toronto.

[1] [https://torontolife.com/city/u-t-professor-sparked-
vicious-b...](https://torontolife.com/city/u-t-professor-sparked-vicious-
battle-gender-neutral-pronouns/)

~~~
Craighead
Please don't use JP as a reliable source. He is extremely subjective and
pushes many ideologies in his "non fiction" takes.

~~~
Hitton
He is professor of psychology who taught in top universities, his scientific
articles have many citations, why wouldn't he be reliable? As far as I'm
concerned he is as reliable as whole field of psychology - there can be
multiple competitive theories, but you can't reject his just because you
happen to not like them.

~~~
dekhn
As a counterpoint, consider Peter Duesberg
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg)),
a world expert on viruses, who denies that the virus HIV causes AIDS. The
reason we can reject this claim is that (unlike his previous work) it's
totally unsupported by any evidence, counter to high quality evidence from
large numbers of mainstream science.

~~~
defertoreptar
The way to make a counterpoint is not to bring up someone else and say "this
other guy's claim is unsupported by evidence."

Instead, you'd do this by showing how Peterson's claim is unsupported by
evidence, specifically on how his view pertains to the current topic.

~~~
dekhn
My counterpoint is apt; it points out that even people who have credentials
can be wrong, and it's important to consider that.

~~~
defertoreptar
Hitton's point is that "you can't reject [Peterson] just because you happen to
not like them." If it was instead "because his claims are unsupported by
evidence," then I could see how your counterpoint is apt. However, that is not
the case.

~~~
dekhn
I was responding to "He is professor of psychology who taught in top
universities, his scientific articles have many citations, why wouldn't he be
reliable?", not "because his claims are unsupported by evidence".

------
NoodleIncident
Here is one of the actual studies, which is much less annoying to read:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234325/?mod=ar...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234325/?mod=article_inline)

I was particularly interested in the participant selection section; they did
go to an effort to select male and female participants with similar gaming
habits. However, this doesn't mean that the only explanation for the different
"craving" response is a fundamental difference between men and women. Just
because you end up with a similar population with similar habits, doesn't mean
that the path those individuals traveled to get there is the same.

As an example of how the observed differences could still be due to nurture
rather than nature, suppose that across all young boys and girls, there is a
subset of people that are predisposed to addiction. Also suppose that in many
cases, an addiction can begin the first time you're exposed to something. Even
if both boys and girls were equally predisposed to become addicted to both
video games and social media, they would not be equally likely to be exposed
to those two addictive digital activities. It would be more likely that a
boy's friends would introduce him to video games, and that a girl's friends
would introduce her to social media. Once they are addicted to one or the
other, they will spend more time on that activity, and will be unlikely to
explore the opposite.

Eventually, these hypothetical boys and girls grow up, and our hypothetical
scientists select participants for their version of this fMRI experiment. They
do a good job selecting male and female participants who play games for
similar numbers of hours, but the potential female video game addicts in this
universe are much less likely to ever start playing games, before getting
addicted to something else. Since these hypothetical people have selected
themselves out of this hypothetical study, they discover a difference in fMRI
responses to images of video games that's correlated with gender, but still
100% caused by existing gender roles and stereotypes.

~~~
solidsnack9000
This argument is superficially compelling but I fear that it is ultimately
argument from ignorance. It is true that we don’t know everything. You even
offer a fairly elaborate example of something that we don’t know whether it
happened or not. It could be true. The problem here is that you offer no
evidence to support whether it is true or not. Now it’s story time and instead
of evaluating the studies and working with a minimal conclusion supported by
the evidence, the task becomes telling the better story.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
The whole point for randomized trials, and much of modern statistics is to
argue from ignorance. You hypothesize that maybe there's something missing,
who knows. A causal boogey man. Then you design a test robust to that. One
term for problems this leads to is omitted variable bias. It's not about "ooh
maybe this one thing is bad." It's about "this class of problem is
introduced."

It's tough to make an intuitive story for why RCTs are important, so the story
sounds elaborate. You don't need to offer evidence against the theory to say
that the methodology is weak.

Anyways, wet streets might cause rain.

~~~
solidsnack9000
Argument from ignorance is a specific kind of logical fallacy. It’s where you
argue for something by saying, in effect, “we don’t know that it’s not true”.

If a hypothesis leads you to test for something and collect (dis)confirming
evidence, And your argument hinges on the evidence, then we aren’t arguing
from ignorance.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
It seems like you're saying "this is weak methodology" is a fallacy. It's open
to all sorts of errors, but since we don't know that any of the errors are
really the case, so we shouldn't argue that it's bad evidence? We aren't
arguing boolean true/false, but strength of evidence.

~~~
solidsnack9000
There are many ways to argue for something like "this is weak methodology" and
some of them are fallacies. Some of them aren't.

A good argument against a study's methodology would probably talk a lot more
about the methodology, and a lot less about a believable alternative narrative
that is supported by the study. The latter strategy is accepting of the
methodology because it is granting that the observed effect is real and
deserving of explanation. In a different light, the earlier comment ("As an
example of how the observed differences could still be due to nurture rather
than nature...") is kind of weird because it is as though the effect might as
well be due to nature -- it would present the same way and be as consistent
and robust -- even if it were due to socialisation.

------
Vrondi
The article claims that inside games "most communication is through text".
This makes me think they haven't seen very many real gamers. There's no
mention of voice chat's extensive use inside games for everything from
gameplay to homework advice from buddies. Pretty clueless.

~~~
charliesharding
In higher level competitive scenarios, yeah voice is predominant. However,
that is by no means the majority. They only seem like a bigger segment of
gamers because they're loud and make themselves known. All they said was that
most is done through text, which is true

~~~
freeflight
Even nearly 20 years ago I was hanging out daily on voice chat servers with my
Counter-Strike buddies.

It wasn't just for coordination in-game, just hanging out and talking while
sometimes not even playing, because that's what even male friends do: They
talk.

It's even more dominant with consoles where since the 360/PS3 era voice has
also seen quite high adoption rates even more common than in PC gaming.

Then there's Discord which is very much the millennial version of "hanging out
in IRC all day" culture combining text and voice chat.

~~~
JakeTheAndroid
Firstly, you're talking about CS which is one of few games where voice chat is
more of the norm. Whats funny is that I still to this day get stuck in pugs
with half the team not having mics. For console games like COD, most causal
games I played few people had mics. But what we are talking about is
competitive games more or less which does generally get more attention than
Viva Piñata or something like that. And, if you look at something like LoL or
Dota2 voice chat is either non-existent or no one uses it. I have ran into so
few people using their mics in Dota2 and that is a competitive game. Instead
people ping or type in chat.

When I played MMORPGs, which I think we can all agree are pretty popular, very
few people had mics. For WoW people would connect to Vent but most didn't have
a mic. It was useful for raids, but most of the time communication was via
text chat. When playing MapleStory I would sit on Vent with my friends who
often played on entirely different servers and no one on that game actually
used Vent or TS regularly as part of their daily grind, it was almost
exclusively chat.

So, I think the assertion that voice chat is a minority is probably correct.
And like you said Discord is beyond a voice chat for gaming. I am in plenty of
Discord channels and I have never once entered into a voice chat with anyone.
It's a community chat room that _happens_ to offer a voice chat option. Plenty
of people use voice chat while gaming, but I don't think it's by and large the
majority.

~~~
freeflight
> Firstly, you're talking about CS which is one of few games where voice chat
> is more of the norm.

For close to 20 years, as such, it's hardly something new. That's just how
communities organized back then: Around clans and servers.

Matchmaking killed a lot of that, but the clan structure helps retain some of
it. That's something a whole lot of people, particularly younger ones,
participate to this day without ever fully going "pro" because there's a
pretty massive middle ground between "absolutely casual gaming" and "sponsored
organized pro gaming".

> For console games like COD, most causal games I played few people had mics.

Did you actually play with friends? There's a reason "party chat" features
like Xbox Live Party were heavily demanded for many years.

> When I played MMORPGs, which I think we can all agree are pretty popular,
> very few people had mics. For WoW people would connect to Vent but most
> didn't have a mic.

That's completely opposite to my experience in vanilla Wow: Organizing and
managing 40 man raids without voice chat was pretty much impossible.

Just like daily guild live mostly happened on a voice chat server, where
people would hang out even when they were not playing.

> So, I think the assertion that voice chat is a minority is probably correct.
> And like you said Discord is beyond a voice chat for gaming.

If you define voice chat as solely "voice chat interactions with randoms in
public rounds" then maybe yes, but your mileage will vary vastly depending on
the platform and genre.

Discord also isn't "beyond a voice chat for gaming", it's pretty much just the
modern manifestation of server centered communities like they used to be a
thing with CS game servers and still are a thing to this day with "Clan TS2
servers", Discord is just a natural evolution of those where people don't have
to pay rent/bandwidth for a server.

~~~
JakeTheAndroid
> For close to 20 years, as such, it's hardly something new. That's just how
> communities organized back then: Around clans and servers.

CS is not new, but it's one game. And even within this one game, many people
do not have mics. Most people don't play exclusively with pre-mades they play
pugs. Either via MM or Faceit (and to a lesser extent these days, ESEA). If
you pug you'll find most people don't use mics at all.

> Matchmaking killed a lot of that, but the clan structure helps retain some
> of it. That's something a whole lot of people, particularly younger ones,
> participate to this day without ever fully going "pro" because there's a
> pretty massive middle ground between "absolutely casual gaming" and
> "sponsored organized pro gaming".

Most people don't play in clans or pre-mades like I said before. Yes, the move
visible players do use voice chat, and at the highest levels it's uncommon for
people to not use it. But a bulk of players in CS do not fall into these
categories whatsoever. The average ranking is Gold Nova-ish which is far from
the top end of the player base.

> Did you actually play with friends? There's a reason "party chat" features
> like Xbox Live Party were heavily demanded for many years.

Yes, I played in a clan starting in MW2 - BO2 or MW3 (I forget which came out
last) and plenty of my clan members didn't have mics during clan events, let
alone just playing random games. This was on Playstation Network, so maybe
Xbox players used this way more, I can't speak to that.

> That's completely opposite to my experience in vanilla Wow: Organizing and
> managing 40 man raids without voice chat was pretty much impossible.

I guess this depends on how dedicated your groups were. We had 40 people in
voice chat, but really only the party leaders regularly had mics in Vent or
TS. This was enough to organize and successfully raid. But I guess YMMV here.
All other MMOs I've played voice chat was essentially non-existent and you
chatted with random people more often anyways since you didn't need pre-made
parties or your guild to do most of the events. Using MapleStory (since I
played the shit out of that) Party Quests were almost always just randoms in
channel 1 not your friends. This echos the experiences I had playing Eve and
Rift when that came out.

> Discord also isn't "beyond a voice chat for gaming", it's pretty much just
> the modern manifestation of server centered communities like they used to be
> a thing with CS game servers and still are a thing to this day with "Clan
> TS2 servers", Discord is just a natural evolution of those where people
> don't have to pay rent/bandwidth for a server.

Discord isn't used exclusively for in game chat in my experience. I'm part of
plenty of communities on discord that have nothing to do with gaming, and even
the gaming communities don't focus around chatting while gaming. They are
usually to keep up with whatever the community is focused on, be it a
streamers Discord or whatever. I'm not saying that Discord isn't used similar
to TS or Ventrilo but it's beyond what those services did, and they aren't
dedicated to just voice chatting with your group. It's a far more versatile
service.

------
throwaway010718
Imagine if this headline read "Research on drunks' preference for
aggressiveness and sobers' for politeness". Would anyone argue that nurture
and societal norms is the reason drunks behave more aggressively ?

As someone who has been drunk on testosterone most of their life, I can
testify it is a powerful and fun drug. Perhaps if research was framed in terms
of hormonal differences rather than sex differences it wouldn't be as
intrinsically controversial.

~~~
esyir
It shouldn't be controversial at all. There are sex differences. A good chunk
of those differences are the effect of hormonal differences that stem from
sexual dimorphism that in turn likely stem from some other evolutionary
selection process.

Does culture play a role in behavior? Probably. But is there an inherent
difference between the sexes? Yes.

~~~
brodo
In the nature vs nurture debate, every time someone argues for all nature or
all nurture it’s an ideological position. That biology has no influence on
behavior is as absurd as that society has none. The division into nature and
nurture is also not as clean-cut as people think it is. There are many things
in human culture that are that way because of biology and our culture
influences our biology over the long run.

~~~
cm2187
Plus unless the person arguing is a biologist backed by some hard evidence, it
is only ideology talking.

~~~
alfromspace
Unless it's James Watson, then shut him up, fire him, and take all his awards
away.

Plenty of biologists see what happens, and toe the line so they can keep their
lives and pay their mortgages.

------
whatshisface
All of the games I played as a kid were clearly designed for boys and young
men (featuring all of the typical things like guns and heavy machinery that
men are well known to like more than women). That's just how the market was.
If it's like that today, then it is no wonder that boys exhibit signs of
enjoying video games more.

~~~
derefr
There are plenty of games "for girls" (the hidden-object and life-simulation
genres are almost exclusively consumed by women, regardless of theming) but
they're not marketed with quite the high-budget superbowl ad-campaign effort
that games "for boys" are.

I've encountered the situation many times where I'll find out one of my female
friends doesn't play video games. I'll ask why, and—disregarding the people
who just don't like to spend time cooped up indoors—it'll usually end out that
she's just never been introduced to a game she's enjoyed. Upon introducing her
to a game or two in the genres more traditionally targeted at women, she'll be
just about as likely as any of my male friends to gradually evolve from there
into an avid gamer: one for whom "gaming" is now counted among their serious
hobbies; one who might be excited to dedicate a weekend to full "hardcore"
engagement with a new game.

In other words, for these ladies, it was 100% a market education problem: the
companies making these products weren't managing to make their target audience
aware of them.

~~~
dublinben
According to some random infographic¹, over 60% of the mobile gaming
demographic is female. This kind of game is absolutely being advertised during
the Super Bowl. They're just not on the radar of "hardcore" gamers who tend to
look down on console and especially mobile players.

¹[https://mediakix.com/blog/mobile-gaming-industry-
statistics-...](https://mediakix.com/blog/mobile-gaming-industry-statistics-
market-revenue/)

~~~
derefr
I didn't want to get into it, but I would like to make a distinction, that I
hope should be obvious in retrospect, and is different from the usual
"casual"/"hardcore" distinction:

Some people _play games_ ; but some other people are only _addicted to
spending money on slot machines_. The kind of mobile "game" you see Super Bowl
ads (or, really, any TV ads) for are almost exclusively actually just slot
machines at their core, with any game mechanics being tacked-on afterthoughts.

(If you wouldn't let your own children play a given "game", and your intuitive
reasoning is the same as why you wouldn't let them wander freely in a
casino—then you probably should mark such titles down under the "casino"
tally, not the "games" tally, no?)

Importantly, the audiences for these two types of... _experiences_ , let's
call them—are mostly non-overlapping sets of people. Plenty of people are
addicted to these slot-machine apps but would never play an actual "game", no
matter how casual it was. They're not in it for game-mechanical "fun"; they're
in it for variable-scheduled dopaminergic rewards. And, vice-versa, the more
of an experienced "gamer" someone is—the more actual _games_ they've played
(where even FarmVille with all its dark patterns is still a _game_ )—the more
they'll have a taste for actual _fun_ brought about by game mechanics, and so
the more clearly they can intuitively feel that these slot-machine apps aren't
providing such "fun."

Once you take these slot-machine non-games and their mostly non-gamer
audiences out of consideration, then things do line up the way I described:
there are no game companies targeting women bothering to spend much on
advertising.

(There are, however, plenty of games _without_ gendered targeting that have
AAA ad spend. Pokemon, for example.)

------
muglug
Here's one of the studies quoted, centring on adolescents' propensity towards
getting addicted to online games:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234325/?mod=ar...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234325/?mod=article_inline).

These studies don’t claim to say anything deeper about either gender's innate
predisposition towards certain behaviours, only that the populations they
studied behave in particular ways.

The data should be used to focus efforts in things like, for example,
preventing online gaming addiction or preventing feelings of inadequacy from
using social media, but I think it's folly to extrapolate the findings to make
any larger scale statements on society at large.

------
belorn
Viewing the initial question from a perspective of social status the answers
the article makes have pretty simple answers. Males competing between other
males in video games and win gains a perceived gain in social status, so when
they put down the game and face others around them there is a natural clash as
the social status gain is seen nor recognized by the social environment
outside the game. Aggression is common in most societies as the cultural
accepted method to defend social status, so from outside it look like video
games make males aggressive.

Females compete for social status more on social media, and thus social gains
and losses occur on their mobile phone. As a result it look like social media
cause females to become aggressive (with the cultural methods of
aggressiveness that is appropriate in a given society).

With this perspective we get the exact behavior that the article highlight
with no difference in brains. Same brain pathways, same biological reaction,
just two different social status competitions (females vs females, males vs
males) and two different cultural accepted behaviors when it comes to
defending social status.

~~~
RandomInteger4
Where do you think those differences in social status competitions originate
from if not from brain differences?

~~~
belorn
If we take a look at the animal kingdom, females compete for social status
over other females in order to get the best males, and males compete for
social status over other males in order to get the best females. Both does
this in order to get the best offspring as part of evolution and natural
selection. You get differences when there is a difference in investment during
the reproduction, like egg and sperm.

Looking at humans it obvious also that there is a strong cultural aspect to
it. In one culture the apex male attribute to reach the top of the social
status ladder would be to go into the jungle and kill a lion with nothing but
a spear. In an other it is to have the title of CEO and have a high number
listed in a bank account. Both is about a social status hierarchy, but with
very different method for competition.

Going back to the article, a man gains social status if he display superiority
over other males in a video game. Why? Video games represent physical games
which represent competition of strength and skills. We can imagine a culture
where that would not gain any social status and then any association with
aggressiveness would go away. No brain surgery required.

~~~
whatshisface
> _In one culture the apex male attribute to reach the top of the social
> status ladder would be to go into the jungle and kill a lion with nothing
> but a spear. In an other it is to have the title of CEO and have a high
> number listed in a bank account._

These are very similar from a behavioral perspective because they both involve
aggression and risk-seeking.

~~~
dsafklndl234
No. Inheritance plays a larger role in becoming a successful
CEO/"professional" than it would in hunting a lion. The biggest lie Americans
tell themselves is that the wealthy got wealthy by "taking risks" and that
they deserve their wealth.

What takes more risk: having large amounts of capital accumulate wealth over
time due or switching between multiple jobs, working longer hours, and being
more stressed as you try to keep your family alive?

~~~
whatshisface
The second might be more stressful, but the first is more risky - you risk
capital to make money, but getting paid is a direct exchange of hours for
dollars.

------
ineedasername
The original (more clicky baity) said "brain differences", which really isn't
born out by the article. It seems highly likely that these preferences are
socially constructed. I have two kids under the age of 10, and both play video
games with the same fervor & intensity. Neither are allowed on social media
yet. (yes, that's a sample size of 1, so it's hardly authoritative, just a
case-in-point)

Also, at least some of the preference males have for videogames over females
is that a majority are designed & marketed with a male audience in mind.

~~~
seph-reed
> two kids under the age of 10

I think puberty might have more of a splitting effect on the human mind than
anyone is saying.

Also, food for thought, humanity as a whole is probably still way too
primitive to have a greater nurture than nature ratio. If you look back,
primitive people appear to be more nature than people now. Looking forwards,
it's probably going to continue. Therefor, we must be somewhere in between,
and I get the feeling we're still pretty green.

------
DoreenMichele
Anecdotal:

I'm female and I like playing city building games and puzzle games, like
Tetris or match three games. My sons have introduced me to games like Master
of Magic by saying "It's like your favorite: SimCity" and then helping me
relate to it as a civilization building game, downplaying the fighty aspects.

Longer version of that anecdote here:

[https://momturnedgamer.blogspot.com/p/about.html](https://momturnedgamer.blogspot.com/p/about.html)

I think my point is that gendered expectations can be overcome to some degree,
especially if you have allies who aren't invested in keeping you stuck in a
particular role. Generally speaking, men who were romantically interested in
me have failed to be that kind of ally.

Not how I wanted it, mind you.

------
thrower123
You sort of have to be willfully ignorant to avoid acknowledging the things vs
people dichotomy.

------
nullbyte
I know the mods hate when we complain about paywalls. But I f __king hate
paywalls.

------
BadassFractal
A super uneducated guess here would be that boys choose more to participate in
skills-based competition and girls gravitate more towards relationship-based
communal activities?

~~~
mendelmaleh
aka things vs people?

------
aiscapehumanity
What a weird study. I mean gaming is very social, a huge presence in many
blocs of social medias

------
bookofjoe
FWIW when I posted it 40 minutes ago I linked to an unpaywalled full-length
version on [http://archive.is/](http://archive.is/). Gotta be fast, I guess.

~~~
dang
It's not ok to post a copy of an article from a completely unrelated domain;
it's important that the site name that shows up next to the title be the
original source.

If you have a link to another source, it's ok to post that in the comments.

------
kitten_smuggler
Any version of this sans paywall?

~~~
swebs
[http://archive.is/xsV4e](http://archive.is/xsV4e)

------
throwawawathrow
Aren't the majority of gamers female anyway? [0]

[0]
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/52-per...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/52-percent-
people-playing-games-women-industry-doesnt-know)

~~~
dang
Could you please not post in the flamewar style to HN?

Also, going on about getting downvoted breaks the site guidelines. If you'd
please review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

~~~
throwawawathrow
Alright I'll remove the snark. The question still stands though

------
dekhn
This article should not be flagged: it's a good-faith article written by
journalist that cites its sources (which include a number of peer-reviewed
studies). It is careful to use conditional language in the title ("Might
explain"). Even if you don't like the conclusion, if you are an honest person
who truly believes that science can help us understand the nature of humanity
and use it to explain our current situation, you should not flag the article.

------
commandlinefan
It was posted on here 6 minutes ago and has already been flagged.

~~~
swebs
Make sure to vouch for it to cancel out the mass-flagging.

~~~
dekhn
How do I do that?

~~~
swebs
Under the title, there should be a link that says "vouch".

~~~
dekhn
I don't see such an option. I turned on "showdead", but that seems to be for
"dead" posts, not "flagged" ones.

Well, either way, hopefully the mods will come by and recognize the
legimitimacy of the post.

------
neo4sure
The author should go to India and see the space program. Might offer a
different perspective. I myself coming from an Asian country have seen many
girl study engineering. It is considered a carier path and nothing more. There
is no stigma attached.

~~~
whatshisface
In poorer countries there tend to be more female engineers because engineering
is a good career for anyone (including women), and in poorer countries, having
a good career is proportionally more important. The prevalence of female
engineers in India is frequently used as support for the natural preference
theory.

~~~
hackinthebochs
To add to this, in countries with low equality and weak social safety nets,
having a lucrative career is far more important for survival. It's western
countries where women are more free to choose a career based on interest.

~~~
neo4sure
This cannot be a correct assumption. In western countries also most
Enginnering jobs pay well above what other female-dominated (medical care)
jobs offer. Then why don't select these well-paying jobs over ones that don't
pay as much?

~~~
tynpeddler
Because their survival is not dependent on their career choice. Tech may pay
more, but being a nurse is still perfectly fine. There are also more women
entering the MD profession than men, and that pays better than tech, so
there's even more room for people to move between fields based on a "natural"
preference (if such a thing exists).

------
defertoreptar
Is there a way to design the flag mechanism so that quality articles do not
die even though they are polarizing?

~~~
swebs
In theory, the mods can whitelist those articles manually after seeing them
repeatedly flagged and vouched for.

However, we know that the mods have already seen this article since the link
was changed from the archive to the paywall URL. In addition, I believe
they've said in the past that they want to discourage particularly
controversial stories. And biology studies like this are unfortunately
controversial to the general public these days.

~~~
dekhn
I agree with your assessment; I believe the site admins are intentionally not
unflagging this article to avoid controversy. It would be nice if they could
come out and say that directly.

~~~
dang
Not true. I only just saw this and have turned off the flags. The main problem
from my perspective is that the thread has filled up with completely off topic
comments about flagging and a lot of inaccurate meta stuff.

------
t0astbread
Why is this flagged+dead?

~~~
prometheus76
Because people who say they believe in science have a really hard time
accepting the cognitive dissonance that arises when science contradicts their
beliefs. Windows shutdown sound plays and they flag it.

~~~
t0astbread
Oh right, I forgot flagging is done by the community.

Addendum: I can kinda understand it though. While research like this might be
correct and is definitely important, it can make it sound like "all men" or
"all women" think this way, to some extent, making those who are different
feel invalid. (Maybe a bit of a personal topic but I'm currently thinking a
lot about my gender and identity and stuff like this is kinda making me
scared.)

Additionally, to some this might make it seem like it's not worth welcoming
diversity in tech. (Which is also not true IMO.)

~~~
commandlinefan
> not worth welcoming diversity in tech.

It doesn’t even suggest that. It just suggests that, no matter how many
initiatives you put into place, you’re never going to be able to achieve
demographic “purity”.

~~~
t0astbread
I know. I'm saying it may sound like that to some people causing a knee jerk
reaction of denial.

------
cookieswumchorr
Let's see how long this stays online

~~~
swebs
Looks like it's already dead on HN.

~~~
verdverm
Just landed on the front page

~~~
commandlinefan
And deleted just as fast.

