Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (171840)	10/3/2005 11:46:58 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Thanks for that post. There's a lot of evidence that we build up our brain's representation of space by moving through it," Denckla tells WebMD. As anyone who spends a significant time around children knows, boys tend to get a lot more practice "moving through space" -- chasing a ball, for instance -- than girls do. "My hypothesis is that we could possibly erase this difference if we pushed girls out into the exploratory mode," Denckla says. She predicts that as more and more girls engage in sports traditionally reserved for boys, like soccer, the data on spatial ability will show fewer disparities between females and males. This is precisely what I'm trying to point out to M Winn. The data keeps coming in, generally in hints, that development plays a very significant role in what we might attribute instead to genetics. It is not just mental abilities either. There have been a number of studies recently, showing that childhood exposure to germs of various sorts (romping through cowpies, having pets, being in daycare so you catch lots of colds, etc) ends up conferring a very significant immune system improvement in adults. Now suppose that this behavior, or the lack of it was cultural. Then along comes some scientist and generates the adult response numbers and says, Oh my gosh, group X must have a genetically superior immune system to group Y, just look at these very statistically significant numbers. Sure, the adult members of group X are say 40% better off than those of Y, but it so happens, that it is not genetic. You can't say it is genetic until you have narrowed it down to some genetic component, or at a minimum conducted experiments which you think (and that is about all one can hope for) rule out other sources. The latter can be rather hard if you don't know what the other sources might be.

To: geode00 who wrote (171840)	10/4/2005 10:35:18 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

"The Greatest Strategic Disaster In US History" vdare.com <<...Lt. Gen. William Odom, Director of the National Security Agency during President Reagan’s second term, a scholar with a distinguished career in military intelligence, declared Bush’s invasion of Iraq to be the "greatest strategic disaster in United States history."...>>

To: geode00 who wrote (171840)	10/5/2005 2:29:37 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You ask such esay questions Geode. <How much of what happens in an individual's brain development is a result of environment: encouragement, discouragement, nutrition, exercise, education, etc. vs being a strict function of DNA? > All of it of course. 100%! No nutrition = the fertilized egg dies. Deficiency in say folic acid, the foetus gets neural tube defects. Deficiency in iodine, more disaster. Not enough selenium, zinc, iron etc game over. Not much protein = not much brain. Etc. Great DNA does nothing. All discouragement = no development because contrary to popular myth, we don't learn from our mistakes, we learn from our successes. When we make a mistake, all we do is identify that effort as a failure not to repeat = do something different. It's the success which is learned and repeated. Encouragement is part of success. What gets rewarded gets done. Encouragement is reward. Zero exercize = no motor development so big areas of the brain will never learn how to control the body. Imagine trying to learn to crawl or walk or hold things with your hands or talk [exercizing tongue, lips, larynx] not until you are 21. It would be difficult if not impossible. Education in the official sense is largely a waste of time though it gets the victim past credentialism. Very little useful brain development is a result of official education. <What is your definition of maturity? > When the person's brain has reached maximum mass. That's tricky to measure. Another guide is wisdom teeth completion which I guess is about the same time as maximum brain mass. Girls' brains reach maximum mass about 3 years before boys' brains. You still haven't given the slightest suggestion as to what this might mean for their development. I suppose you think "nothing". The rest of your post was just repeating the silly old cliches and obvious things. Women with better-than-average spatial skills. Really? Some men can write. Omigosh, who'd have thought it? What a revelation. "We build up our brain's representation of space by moving through it". Does Geary really think this is news? Does he know the sky is blue and grass is green? Some researchers even believe that "nurturing one's brain can enhance what nature has provided". Who pays those people to come up with such things. That was discovered millennia ago. One day they'll catch up to us here in SI and suddenly discover that female brains maturing earlier than male brains makes a big difference. As shown in maths and physics results at the highest level. Girls are quite good at language because that is fairly well taught from age 2 onwards, so by the time they reach puberty, they've had a LOT of reading, writing, talking and listening. Their brains are wired for it. I'm surprised you have trouble understanding that. It's very obvious. You know that it's important not to miss child development years or stages. The reason for that is because once the child is fully grown, it's hard work to go back and fill in stages missed and teach an old dog new tricks. Girls are missing out on maths and physics opportunities because they are kept in the dark until it's too late. But no matter what, females are doomed to less learning in some areas or others because they have less learning time. That's the same for any individual who matures earlier - they need to get things crammed in earlier so they have a framework to build on for lifelong learning. Then there are the intrinsic differences, which is another story. Mqurice