Let's talk about women in competitive games

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Originally Posted by JKDS

What I mean to say, is that you're taking a study, and drawing conclusions that arent there. Correlation causation and what not

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Oh yeah! And correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does imply something.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

You've got the cause and effect backwards. If given all options, boys will still overwhelmingly gravitate toward legos, and footballs, and guns and girls would gravitate to tea parties and dress up and dolls.

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He doesn't have it backwards, but neither do you.

What we don't know is the cause and effect in the first place. Like we went over the last time, even if young boys gravitate towards trucks more than young girls, we don't know if this changes from environmental factors so much so that you could test those boys and girls at a later age and find that the conditions they've been subjected to changed what they gravitated towards.

Now, I probably agree with the conclusion that you have, but that conclusion does require some leaps.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

Don't be such a naysayer. You're already shut down to it being possible that gender differences and not society shape behaviors of fully grown adults and children alike. Certainly society doesn't influence sexual preferences when it comes to homosexuality, right?

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My points stand, naysayer or no. It seems like I think one way, you think anther, and neither can scientifically prove the other wrong.

As far as homosexuality, its certainly possible that society influences it. Im a terrible gayrights activist, and I dont actually know if its been proven to be genetic or not. I see stories about the "gay gene" every now and then, but they mostly seem speculative. Genetic is way better for the cause tho, and it saves me from asinine questions like "why'd you do that".

Its honestly kinda annoying that the first time this was brought up tho, it was brought up to me.

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Originally Posted by JKDS

My points stand, naysayer or no. It seems like I think one way, you think anther, and neither can scientifically prove the other wrong.

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We haven't even entered discovery yet.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

He doesn't have it backwards, but neither do you.

What we don't know is the cause and effect in the first place. Like we went over the last time, even if young boys gravitate towards trucks more than young girls, we don't know if this changes from environmental factors so much so that you could test those boys and girls at a later age and find that the conditions they've been subjected to changed what they gravitated towards.

Now, I probably agree with the conclusion that you have, but that conclusion does require some leaps.

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I'm pretty sure prenatal hormone exposure effects brain structure effects life preferences. Seems like I've got the right order.

Society can change things about you, but not every thing.

But yes, there are holes and there are leaps.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

I'm pretty sure prenatal hormone exposure effects brain structure effects life preferences. Seems like I've got the right order.

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typically, yes. but what we don't know is how and to what extent with regards to the trucks.

take mathematics for example. maybe boys are naturally better at math than girls, but also maybe if you take a bunch of 5 year old boys and never teach them math but then teach a bunch of 5 year old girls math you could find that the boys lost some innate tendency towards math and girls gained some, to the point that the group of girls are innately better at math than the group of boys

As a wider point, I think it's silly to believe that society is somehow artificial, that it wasn't deeply influenced by our human nature as well as our human past. It should definitely be subject to change to try to exist in an ever-changing world, but it's a perfectly sensible position to point out that if we're on step 10,000 somewhere very near step 1 boys were acting like boys do today and girls were acting like girls do today and society has grown around that.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

typically, yes. but what we don't know is how and to what extent with regards to the trucks.

take mathematics for example. maybe boys are naturally better at math than girls, but also maybe if you take a bunch of 5 year old boys and never teach them math but then teach a bunch of 5 year old girls math you could find that the boys lost some innate tendency towards math and girls gained some, to the point that the group of girls are innately better at math than the group of boys

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There was some guy that minted chess masters out of his kids, 2 boys and 1 girl I think. While the girl was the first female chess grandmaster, I think she peaked at like number 10 in the world.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/arti...ter-experiment

I read that the girl re-purposed the area of her brain that recognized faces to recognize board patterns and knew what moves to make following, though if she was presented with a novel arrangement, she was markedly slower at figuring out her following moves.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

There are two other larger points I'd like to make.

We never get matter of fact truths - just not yet shown wrong truths. And in this, we're going to miss that mark by a bit.

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I'll clarify. Im arguing the difference between a scientific 'truth' and those from psychology. No, we dont know for a fact that the earth revolves around the sun. We know that we've studied the earth's movement for centuries, are really really good at predicting where we'll be, and it appears that we've orbited the sun for longer than we've studied it. I suppose its possible the planet decides to jump 30000ft out of orbit one day, but its pretty safe that we 'know' it wont.

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And second.
Right they're called base-rates. Remember Kahnmenn teaches that you always listen to base-rates.

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Sure, but the ones we have arent exact and dont prove what you want them to prove.

You say, "brains are different, thats why girls suck at video games". I say "girls dont play video games anywhere near as often, and choose not to do so due to societal norms". These studies dont prove either point to any degree

JKDS, I don't get your resistance to this and you're being somewhat obtuse, which I find weird. Of course LEGOS or Rubik's Cube or whatever aren't hard-wired into our psychology but as Rilla said, LEGOS represent a class of things that interest boys. In previous generations or centuries, it would have been building blocks and puzzles or what not.

obviously team sports have been around for centuries and probably millennia.

Moreover, the existence of LEGOS and football is proof that something about us makes us like them, because we invented them.

Sexuality/gender is continuum; there are certainly gay men and women who love sports or other "masculine" activities as spectators and participants, but it's hard to take you seriously if you don't think that gay men or women are somewhat wired differently in their interest in these things. I'm guessing that gay men were given footballs and toy soldiers to play with as kids, not Julie Andrews albums.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

There was some guy that minted chess masters out of his kids, 2 boys and 1 girl I think. While the girl was the first female chess grandmaster, I think she peaked at like number 10 in the world.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/arti...ter-experiment

I read that the girl re-purposed the area of her brain that recognized faces to recognize board patterns and knew what moves to make following, though if she was presented with a novel arrangement, she was markedly slower at figuring out her following moves.

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They were all chicks apparently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Polgar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Polgar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r

Their pops

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A...B3_Polg%C3%A1r

The best of them peaked at no 8 in the world.

Getting back specifically to gaming, it seems to me that there are plenty of hardcore female gamers, but the difference is the percentage of men between the ages of 18-45 who have logged serious time playing video games is magnitudes higher than those of women.

Like I don't play videogames now, but I could meet a guy my age today and talk about NHL '94, and I'm really certain that's a shared experience.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

There was some guy that minted chess masters out of his kids, 2 boys and 1 girl I think. While the girl was the first female chess grandmaster, I think she peaked at like number 10 in the world.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/arti...ter-experiment

I read that the girl re-purposed the area of her brain that recognized faces to recognize board patterns and knew what moves to make following, though if she was presented with a novel arrangement, she was markedly slower at figuring out her following moves.

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Looks like an even more pro-nurture piece of evidence than I would expect to find.

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Originally Posted by JKDS

Sure, thats certainly possible. In fact many small sample studies have shown that boys tend to have better spacial recognition and what not. Whatever that means.

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"Tends" is standard statistics jargon. The test results of a sample isn't "is" or "isn't" and instead is "typically" or "tends to"

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Looks like an even more pro-nurture piece of evidence than I would expect to find.

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Right, it's both. They were made grandmasters, literally everything about their culture was chess, but none of them could crack the top spot. Buncha dudes did.

Reminds me of how Japan is complaining because no Japanese can win the top spot in sumo wrestling anymore. It's all Mongolians.

Or the search for the Great White Hope once Jack Johnson started pummeling fools.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

Remember, it really seems like the Sun orbits the Earth.

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That was my intended meaning, yes.

It seems like these gender differences are culturally based, but the data are indicating that culture is less of a factor than we had hypothesized.

Yeah, you dug, I set, I was hoping JKDS would spike.

Is typing a different type of skill than typical gaming? Before she died, the fastest typist was a she, and from what I can tell she probably could have broken that record under the testing and training that the current holder has. I see no reason to think of it as any different from gaming. The hand eye coordination is there.

btw aubrey's mess around rate is high enough that she could probably compete for the world record with training. i thought i was fast when i hit 90 wpm drenched in sweat.

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Originally Posted by baudib

JKDS, I don't get your resistance to this and you're being somewhat obtuse, which I find weird. Of course LEGOS or Rubik's Cube or whatever aren't hard-wired into our psychology but as Rilla said, LEGOS represent a class of things that interest boys. In previous generations or centuries, it would have been building blocks and puzzles or what not.

obviously team sports have been around for centuries and probably millennia.

Moreover, the existence of LEGOS and football is proof that something about us makes us like them, because we invented them.

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Sure, lots of people like the things. Enough to create it in the first place. But women used to be encouraged to play with dolls, still are mostly, and men used to be encouraged to play sports, and still are mostly. Theres a ton of societal pressure going on there

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Sexuality/gender is continuum; there are certainly gay men and women who love sports or other "masculine" activities as spectators and participants, but it's hard to take you seriously if you don't think that gay men or women are somewhat wired differently in their interest in these things. I'm guessing that gay men were given footballs and toy soldiers to play with as kids, not Julie Andrews albums.

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Again, its possible genders are wired differently. Im not foreclosing that possibility. But I dont think you can affirmatively state this is the case given with what little knowledge on the subject we have. You cannot say that its not almost solely societal norms that are to blame.

I dont even know what to say about the gay kids thing. It sounds like you're trying to say that gay men were given footballs and rejected them for musicals...or that they arent interested in masculine things. Ill just point out that there are pro sports players who clearly dont fit that stereotype and walk away on that point.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

Right, it's both. They were made grandmasters, literally everything about their culture was chess, but none of them could crack the top spot. Buncha dudes did.

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we don't expect that the person who puts the most hours in gets the best results, and this certainly doesn't suggest a gender divide.

the sample isn't big enough or randomized enough, but it's a pretty big blow to the idea that men are naturally better at chess. these chicks were trained cradle to grave and entered the same percentile as those who beat them. we couldnt expect better results and this suggests that if the same were done with large enough samples, the gender winrates may not differ.

still i think the best explanation is testosterone. it's what gives men the desire to put in more hours and admit defeat less

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Originally Posted by JKDS

Settle down there sparky

1. I agree their brain chemistry looks different. What conclusion drawn from that is proven tho?
2. "No special conditioning", really? How could you possibly rule out social conditioning entirely. How old were the monkeys before being studied? How long were they in captivity before the idea to study this came about? What was the behavior of the handlers who were with them? How many monkeys? Were other factors like color, smell, texture ruled out? What kind of food were they given? Did they sleep well? Were they being studied for anything else at the time which could have influenced the study?

No doubt, its neat that monkeys tended to do this. But you're trying to say that it proves "boys will be boys" by nature, and you'd be hard pressed to prove so

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Maybe if you'd read the fucking study before you try to intelligently speak about it you wouldn't have all of these questions (many of which are largely irrelevant).

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

They were all chicks apparently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Polgar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Polgar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r

Their pops

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A...B3_Polg%C3%A1r

The best of them peaked at no 8 in the world.

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That's who I was talking about earlier in the thread.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

we don't expect that the person who puts the most hours in gets the best results, and this certainly doesn't suggest a gender divide.

the sample isn't big enough or randomized enough, but it's a pretty big blow to the idea that men are naturally better at chess. these chicks were trained cradle to grave and entered the same percentile as those who beat them. we couldnt expect better results and this suggests that if the same were done with large enough samples, the gender winrates may not differ.

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If you put males under those same conditions, they would blow the women out of the water.

The #1 player in the world right now taught himself and didn't take his chess training very seriously by those standards until he was already top 100 in the world.

Edit: I want to point out that the grandmaster title isn't just given based on rating/skill level. You have to achieve norms based on "performance ratings" inside of certain qualifying tournaments, so there are plenty of people who do not have the GM title who are stronger than a substantial portion of GMs just because they don't play as much or play in the types of events that would get them the GM norms needed to be awarded that title. It's kind of a goofy way to do it, but that's what it is.

Also, Susan Polgar never broke the top 100 players in the world.

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Originally Posted by JKDS

Again, its possible genders are wired differently. Im not foreclosing that possibility. But I dont think you can affirmatively state this is the case given with what little knowledge on the subject we have.

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Fucking seriously.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=gender+differences+in+brain+wiring

There's not a lack of information on this topic, for fuck's sake.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

They were all chicks apparently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Polgar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Polgar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r

Their pops

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A...B3_Polg%C3%A1r

The best of them peaked at no 8 in the world.

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Unrelated, but Susan Polgar is a fucking cunt. I worked on a team with her and her husband (who is also a cunt) on some projects around 2004-2007 or so. They were both kicked out of the US Chess Federation in 2008-2009 after pulling a bunch of scumbag moves.

Edit: Fun fact, but back in the mid-late 80s, the international governing body for chess decided to just add an extra 100 rating points on to the ratings for all of the active women chess players to make things "fair."

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

If you put males under those same conditions, they would blow the women out of the water.

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how do you know this?

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The #1 player in the world right now taught himself and didn't take his chess training very seriously by those standards until he was already top 100 in the world.

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let's be clear here, im not arguing one or the other -- im pointing out statistical problems. the example rilla used is of people who are far more indicative of the general population on an inherent skill level than your example. yours is a sample of pretty much a person who is naturally as good at chess as it gets.

i would like to see more on the standard deviations of iq between genders. one study from a hundred years ago doesnt make a case, but if there were several and they showed the same trend, your conclusion would be backed by the evidence more than the alternative.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

how do you know this?



let's be clear here, im not arguing one or the other -- im pointing out statistical problems. the example rilla used is of people who are far more indicative of the general population on an inherent skill level than your example. yours is a sample of pretty much a person who is naturally as good at chess as it gets.

i would like to see more on the standard deviations of iq between genders. one study from a hundred years ago doesnt make a case, but if there were several and they showed the same trend, your conclusion would be backed by the evidence more than the alternative.

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A large percentage of the top current 500 players in the world followed a path like I described. No women have in history.

Also just Google studies on it. The standard deviations of a lot of things are different between the genders, like height, and it comes down to the XX vs XY thing. That's actually about 1,000x more interesting than the direction this conversation went.

JKDS and Wuf, just reading through the thread you two seem to be being intentionally obtuse at times. Like the "Legos haven't been around long enough for us to evolve" line should be looked back at as a red flag for you JKDS. A ton of evidence has been posted that points towards gender roles being influenced by hormones, yet your only response is "nothing is proven, and it either is cultural or hormonal, so 50/50" along with "here's an anecdote."

I'm not saying you're wrong, but your position as you support it is weak.

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Originally Posted by boost

JKDS and Wuf, just reading through the thread you two seem to be being intentionally obtuse at times. Like the "Legos haven't been around long enough for us to evolve" line should be looked back at as a red flag for you JKDS. A ton of evidence has been posted that points towards gender roles being influenced by hormones, yet your only response is "nothing is proven, and it either is cultural or hormonal, so 50/50" along with "here's an anecdote."

I'm not saying you're wrong, but your position as you support it is weak.

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the stuff ive said is first semester statistics material.

i agree mostly with the idea that the best gamers come from the population of males for innate reasons. my issue arises when using data and statistics to say something they don't. for example, even if god almighty were to descend from his heavenly throne and bestow upon his children the knowledge that he indeed made women less good at gaming than men, the statistics we have to date could not be rightly used to draw that conclusion.

it's probably true, at least in some ways it's probably true, but extrapolation is bad business. even something as compelling as the larger standard deviations in male iq's is rife with confounding variables. we'd have to find a population of women that were raised exactly the same way as men and then test their iq's to see if the trend holds. and here's the thing, even if it still remained plausible that men have larger standard deviations in iq's, the trend would likely not be the same, as there would be some not-totally-predictable alteration in outcomes.

that said i think it is probably still true that there are more male intellect outliers than female ones. the funny thing is probably none of us are outliers

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

the stuff ive said is first semester statistics material.

i agree mostly with the idea that the best gamers come from the population of males for innate reasons. my issue arises when using data and statistics to say something they don't. for example, even if god almighty were to descend from his heavenly throne and bestow upon his children the knowledge that he indeed made women less good at gaming than men, the statistics we have to date could not be rightly used to draw that conclusion.

it's probably true, at least in some ways it's probably true, but extrapolation is bad business. even something as compelling as the larger standard deviations in male iq's is rife with confounding variables. we'd have to find a population of women that were raised exactly the same way as men and then test their iq's to see if the trend holds. and here's the thing, even if it still remained plausible that men have larger standard deviations in iq's, the trend would likely not be the same, as there would be some not-totally-predictable alteration in outcomes.

that said i think it is probably still true that there are more male intellect outliers than female ones. the funny thing is probably none of us are outliers

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Yeah, I think I lumped you in there then wrote a post aimed at JKDS.

@bold, ha. Not sure why this is so amusing to me, but I'm glad you tacked it on there.

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Originally Posted by oskar

There are two things I usually try to avoid on this forum: joining the anti feminism circlejerk and encouraging Jesse. So let's two birds, one stone this bitch.

What makes this so interesting to me is that there are no exceptions. Well, there's one: Sasha Hostyn. Remarkable sc2 player, very nice girl, may or may not still have a penis. Just for the sake of this topic I'll not make her count.

There are a few girls in the top 0.01% of the global ladders. Potter from CLG:Red in CS:GO, Slayer's Eve in SC2. Elya in Dota2. None of them even make the top 500 in these games.
I am familiar with all the arguments. Women don't need to make themselves attractive, we already find them attractive. They have the create-a-life-purpose hole that makes it just too easy to cop out of all earthly competition, the cultural stigma, the way girls are raised. But none of these explain why there are none; No girls at all at the top level of competition. It also doesn't explain why the girls that come close the top level are neither butch nor dykes. They are all remarkably attractive. Please do explain.

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may or may not still have a penis :D Althought you wrote here about women (I`m not a feminist), in poker, I think, women have much more chences to win because of the natural canning))

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Originally Posted by Lltyldide

may or may not still have a penis :D Althought you wrote here about women (I`m not a feminist), in poker, I think, women have much more chences to win because of the natural canning))

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So you're saying their cans are the reason they win?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ArzqF3aF54...Players_02.jpg

I honestly haven't even thought about poker. Did we ever, or do we currently have any female members that are consistent beyond low stakes? As far as I remember this forum is a huge sausage party outside of the commune.

Courtiebee

oh fuck I should have known that.
she's also on twitch
http://www.twitch.tv/courtiebee
everyone's on twitch these days.

poker is inherently a dude game. it's basically a different form of the "one-up" game (something boys do but girls don't. they play the "me too" game instead). as for succeeding in poker, i would describe that as one of the most testosterone infused things you can do. it requires a nutsack of adamantium and an inability to overly second-guess yourself. neither of which are common among the estrogenies.

nah

i should clarify that im not talking about grinding. that skill is the same kind you find in heavy gamers.

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Originally Posted by oskar

I honestly haven't even thought about poker. Did we ever, or do we currently have any female members that are consistent beyond low stakes? As far as I remember this forum is a huge sausage party outside of the commune.

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I played THREE $1k turbo SnGs last year and won TWO of them! That means I've made it, right? ;)

sick win rate Courtie

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Originally Posted by donkbee

I played THREE $1k turbo SnGs last year and won TWO of them! That means I've made it, right? ;)

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turbos are for donks

I've watched your stream yesterday for a bit. Then I watched some Dwan HU today, and I'm thinking it's time to play some poker again. And as soon as I remember where I put my secure key I'm cashing in my ftp's and start a roll again.
The game looks fun again.

Nice, GL! And thanks for watching <3