Men, Women, and Chess.

1) This is a little obfuscated.  Me being a physicist and sociology being a soft science has no relevance to any point I made other than agreeing with the person I was responding to that with the soft sciences you can draw multiple contradictory conclusions.  So let's dismiss that as the clear ad hominem that it is and move on from 'however'.

2) This appears to be the strawman fallacy, though again you aren't very clear.  Are you pretending there is no evidence?  Untrue.  Are you pretending 'the evidence leans towards' is the same as 'I have irrefutable proof'?  That's your man of straw.  Female and male chess playing is one obscure aspect in the wider field of comparative neurobiology of the brain.  Pretending that is not a field of interest to "scientists& co" is a little naive.  There are differences, they do affect performance in certain tasks. 

Are you aware that you linked to the same article again?  I have the same answer again:  The conclusion of the study you cited is, paraphrasing, 'we found that beginner ratings are the same for boys and girls, therefore we conclude that they have exactly the same potential to reach the highest levels'.  The obvious fallacy is perhaps why this study is only cited once in three years.  That's soft science at its worst.

An obvious fallacy, which you ignore because your like your politically correct conclusion and sought out evidence to support it, which you then fail to critique. Note I am criticising the conclusion because it is fallacious, not because it is soft science.  Though it is, and this demonstrates why that can be a problem.

This is not an equality issue, it's not a criticism of women or a claim of superiority by men.  Our brains are different, we are better adapted to different roles though there is naturally a lot of overlap on the bell curves.  You don't have to close your mind to questions out of political correctness.

You seem interested in where I put my penis, if you would like to submit an orifice for consideration you'll need to confirm Olga is a girl's name, and send an application form with pictures.

why are people so scared to admit physiological brain differences between the genders... is it really so hard to admit the obvious.  Nobody is saying that society doesn't have a role.  This is also equally obvious.  However, as society is becoming, or already nearly is in america, equal in opportunity for both genders, this societal impact will become negigible.  Men think differently than Women, and neither to one's benefit or advantage overall.  Clearly there are women who think "more like men" than the average man does, and viceversa.  There are exceptions to every rule.  I just recently read an article which talked about the differences in the IMMUNE SYSTEM between the genders and how each gender is better suited to receive organs of their same gender.. even if the size is comparable.  We are not the same, this is foolish equality garbage.  It would be so nice to say that "we are just the same... lets hold hands and sing Kumbaya..." but unfortunately such silly assumptions are now known to be untrue. 

(and everybody knows sociology is a soft science.  Even my sociology teachers admitted that...common knowledge)

Men must have poor memories--it seems this same thread comes up every two weeks and we all jump in anew

yes its funny how many times EXACTLY the same topic comes up again and again and yet many people comment on it every time :P

1) I dismissed it as irrelevant, quite explicitly, and noted it was ad hominem.  You ignored the implied question of relevance and attacked ad hominem again.

2) Again you don't appear to have grasped what I wrote, or are pretending not to.  That's exactly the same strawman you already tried.

It appears you aren't going to address any of my points.  You are being politically correct.  I've already noted this is not a criticism of women or claim of superiority for men, which you ignored with your next ad hominem.

I warned yous, but no, yous would not listen!

1) society has always treated groups of people with notably different physical appearances differently.  this is a no brainer.

2)  does anyone really think that our anatomies are the only way men and women differ?  it wouldn't make sense that there are zero differences between men and women except for these radically different anatomies (oh yah and don't forget the chemical, hormonal, etc. differences that come about from these different anatomies).  

3) just because men and women obviously have differences doesn't mean that men are smarter than women.  and just because someone points out the existence of differences does not mean that that person is concluding that men are smarter than women.  and just because olga and beelzebub know big words does not mean that either of them is smarter than the other.  although, i'm willing to bet that there are physiological differences between them . . .

 It's difficult trying to debate with you when you invent arguments for me and argue against those instead of mine. 

As a real scientist, I dislike the soft sciences because they are less rigorous in the scientific method.  This, as I have already pointed out repeatedly, has nothing at all to do with any of my arguments.  You are focusing on it to avoid a real debate.  The rest of your post doesn't relate to mine at all.

Inferiority/superiority as I again have repeatedly stated, is not my argument.  I have not cited "common knowledge".  Men and women having different capabilities do not make one inferior to the other.  You are being PC.  There is no other reason for insisting against the evidence that there can be no actual affect from neurological differences. 

Rather than address my points you are writing your own arguments for me and then attacking those.  What's the latin for the strawman fallacy?

You have addressed nothing I have said for several posts so I'm not wasting any further time on you. 

It feels like this "discussion" is winding down.  I got exactly what I wanted out of it.  I'm obviously not as smart as most of the posters in this forum, and I wanted to hear some smarter folks than I talk about this sticky issue.

P.S. I studied music in college so I only know how to pronounce various languages and have little idea what they mean.  

Yawn!

It's a game that anyone can play no matter what sex, race, creed, age, orientation, skill level.... and on and on.  This whole brain difference thing is just a little over the top and some of you are writing so carefully that you're really saying nothing beyond circular statements that cancel eachother out.

For the love of God; just play!

That touches a raw nerve for those of us whose recent marriages are now in question, and is probably best left out of this forum, even though you are just joking.

I just think we way over analyze the men v. women thing in chess.  There are some outstanding female players which demonstrates their capabilities as a whole.  We try to make this much more than it really is, in my view.  There is no more logic to this debate than, perhaps, the reasoning behind why more men played with Tonka trucks as boys.. or played baseball.  I think there has become some unspoken perception that chess is a male thing (like baseball) only becuase it has been dominated by males over time.  Women are no less capable; perhaps many are simply just less interested and thus, less committed.  I doubt anyone would be naive enough to suggest that women are less strategic or calculating than men.  You can point more to environment than biology.  This topic, I would suggest, is naive.

There is no such thing as a naive topic.  Naive opinions perhaps.

Oh dear God, the semantics!!!   Forgive me and let me clarify...

This topic is really stupid and you're opinions (mostly stated in the form of carefully written questions paralleled with the use of quotations to make it appear the opinions are not your own) are naive...

Who started this foolish topic anyways!? 

We did this before and it ended up being LOCKED I believe by the chess.com gods.

 While not getting into the reasons why I would like to point out that this statement is an understatement. Men at the top level in chess are only slightly better than women ?  I believe if there was a team match of the top ten men in the world against the top ten women in the world the women would be slaughtered, it would NOT even be close. In view of this I think we should drop the "slightly" at the very least. The average rating of the two teams would be : 

Women : 2567

Men :      2769 

Well, based on my stay in chess.com so far, i have noticed that most ladies don't care about the outcome of the game...they are more interested in the social aspect of it; they enjoy the fun and thats all...thats actually good for the game ya know.THE FUN THEREIN get their 70% mark while the necessary mental concentration only get 30% mark, on the average.

" (that "as a real scientist" was a quote of that nice guy, who insisted with lack of evidence to say that there is different potential but there is not, that neurobiological differences leads somewhere but who knows where, that the study proposed was fallacious because it didn't consider neurobiological differences that would lead to different potential albeit the registered potential was the same - and there was no neurobiological proof to argument differently -, and finally lacked to consider a comprehensive category to study the object under discussion that could consider the social bias, adding eventually strawmen here and there to undervalue the lack of any evidence of his beloved hard-science.)(btw I mixed up, I admit, the position of Olimar, who made the real "common knowledge" statement, with his one, so in this I admit belzebubby is innocent) "

Stating "the evidence leans towards" is not "insisting with lack of evidence".  You ignored the evidence I posted.  I clearly stated the fallacy in the study you posted, and neurobiology was not it.  The fallacy was the assumption that equal performance at the beginner level means equal potential to reach the same highest level.  You rewrote every point i've made and argued against your own versions, while I quote your actually blatherings in responses to you.  I can see that the reason you fail to quote is so you can attack men of straw, as you have just done again in blatantly lying about my positions.

And the plot thickens!