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On November 20 2010 07:43 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
Your only chance for supporting 1 and 2 is arguing by gender, not by sex. Gender meaning "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex" and sex meaning biologically male or female. There is no significant scientific evidence supporting the claims that men are more competitive than women or men are better "strategic thinkers" than women. If those things are true, it's because of cultural/behavioral/psychological traits -- how we raise boys and how we raise girls.
Not true, while he fails to provide any evidence for his claims, neither really do you. It's certainly not obvious that cultural factors triumph in a debate which has raged on for ages. Heck, most philosophers and psychologists have turned pretty hard in favour of nature within the past few decades, since the decline of behaviorism in favour of more neuro-sciencesque responses to the questions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08baron-cohen.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ei=5090&en=497fba7d39bb5396&ex=1281153600&partner=rs
You'll find neuroscientists and many philosophers aren't exactly in agreement with many other thinkers particularly your leftist sociologists. It's one of the biggest debates in the history of mankind, but it's far from obvious at this point where the hatchet falls.
In my own opinion, I think there's a reason why men make up 99% of Grandmaster chess players, that goes beyond cultural factors, but the reality is there has been no solid conclusions either way.
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On November 20 2010 07:43 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 07:10 ganjazerg wrote:how can people deny these following facts 1. men are more competitive in nature than women
2. men are better strategic thinkers than women
3. starcraft does infact require "intelligence"honestly the amount of people stating the opposite is surprising... the long version + Show Spoiler +1. as several people mentioned, this is simple evolutionary biology. men compete, and brag with their victories. men have a natural impulse to compete with eachother, in every imaginable way. boys play soccer, girls play with dolls. that's just the way it has always been. and anyone claiming it's only due to cultural indoctrination is either deluded or not educated enough to understand the concept of evolution.
2. i'm not talking about sports, men's physical superiority is not up for debate (anyone denying this i simply cannot take seriously). i'm talking about the ability to abstract, think efficience-oriented and plan long-term. i used chess as an example in a previous post and its a perfect example. the fact that women can't compete with men in chess proves this point. it's also a fact that the requirements to be an above-average sc player, are similar to the requirements of being an above-average chess player.
3. "you don't need to be bright to be good at starcraft" is just plain bullshit. you definitely DO need to be bright. what are you doing, if not constantly obtaining and processing information? calculating probabilities and possibilities? adapting and making decisions under pressure?
do you know this feeling when you are about to engage in a game-deciding battle, and you KNOW your positioning is very bad, and you KNOW you could retreat with minimal losses and force a fight with way better positioning, but in your mind you are like "meh lets get it over with"? and then you engage the battle, and lose the game. what just happened was... you got lazy. you got lazy because starcraft on a high level is mentally exhausting. it requires mental stamina, just like chess. Your only chance for supporting 1 and 2 is arguing by gender, not by sex. Gender meaning "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex" and sex meaning biologically male or female. There is no significant scientific evidence supporting the claims that men are more competitive than women or men are better "strategic thinkers" than women. If those things are true, it's because of cultural/behavioral/psychological traits -- how we raise boys and how we raise girls.
Wellllllllllllllllllll... there is some evolutionary evidence via evolutionary psychology that would suggest that there are biological differences in gender that would suggest 1 and 2 to a very minor degree
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Even without considering scientific or biological reasons, there is a huge disparity between the number of males playing games like Starcraft and the number of females playing it. Naturually, that means that there's less chance to find a really good player in that group and when you consider the pro scene really focuses on about the top 200 players or so out of the millions that are playing, it's pretty easy to see why we generally don't see too many female gamers in the spotlight. That having been said, there definitely are noteable females in professional gaming in all genres so it's not like they don't exist... There's just not a whole lot of them.
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On November 20 2010 09:45 Thrill wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 07:10 mcc wrote:
Seems you cannot separate neutral factual statement (like "men are born better at chess"), and valuation statements 1. The statement is not neutral. This is obvious in that it takes a very specific side in an argumentative debate, nature v nurture - which is impossible to settle without the use of unethical and - by societies modern standards - inhuman research. 2. The statement is not factual. It's not backed up by any factual study. The statement "men of age X generally show a higher aptitude for success in chess than women of age X/Y" would be factually accurate if a study did indeed support such findings. It is the notion that an individuals ability to succeed in a game constructed by humans raised in a normative society is determined by said individuals mix of genes, that strikes myself (and anyone who dares question commonly accepted beliefs) as so thoroughly unsubstantial.
No it does not require necessarily any immoral research to settle nature v nurture debate in this and probably in any case. Yes it takes sides, but by neutral factual statement i mean that by stating it I am not saying it is good or bad, I am no assigning any moral value to it, I am also not implying by it any valuation of women or men as members of society.
So by factual part in this context I do not mean that it is necessarily true, but that it does not contain any moral valuation. Whether it is true or not it will not change my moral opinion about anybody.
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I think the main cause is that there are generally waaay fewer girls/women that are interessted in "war- and actiongames". Obviously there are females that are interessted in all sorts of game genres. But it seem that most of them are more into peaceful management/puzzle/adventure/etc than action or fast paced rts genres.
And out of that small pool available you now have to find the ones that are capable of beeing a progamer. It is just an insanely small number.
Maybe your very own girlfriend has the best foundation of beeing the one and only empress that would be hailed for years, but if she doesn't try or simply has no interesst in it we will never know.
So the best thing we all can do is just let everybody try out SC2, maybe we are lucky and find somebody great (and obviously support the found persons)
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On November 20 2010 10:18 kataa wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 07:43 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
Your only chance for supporting 1 and 2 is arguing by gender, not by sex. Gender meaning "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex" and sex meaning biologically male or female. There is no significant scientific evidence supporting the claims that men are more competitive than women or men are better "strategic thinkers" than women. If those things are true, it's because of cultural/behavioral/psychological traits -- how we raise boys and how we raise girls. Not true, while he fails to provide any evidence for his claims, neither really do you. It's certainly not obvious that cultural factors triumph in a debate which has raged on for ages. Heck, most philosophers and psychologists have turned pretty hard in favour of nature within the past few decades, since the decline of behaviorism in favour of more neuro-sciencesque responses to the questions. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08baron-cohen.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ei=5090&en=497fba7d39bb5396&ex=1281153600&partner=rsYou'll find neuroscientists and many philosophers aren't exactly in agreement with many other thinkers particularly your leftist sociologists. It's one of the biggest debates in the history of mankind, but it's far from obvious at this point where the hatchet falls. In my own opinion, I think there's a reason why men make up 99% of Grandmaster chess players, that goes beyond cultural factors, but the reality is there has been no solid conclusions either way.
In serious circles it is more like million little debates about specific issues, and everyone is pretty sure that in most of them the hatchet falls somewhere in-between, they just argue exactly where. Yes, in social sciences and philosophy there are few that argue nurture all the way, but we can ignore them, they are harmless mostly 
Of course in the end you can argue that even things that are called nurture are controlled by nature, because how much you can be influenced by society is again controlled by genes , but this approach to defining the problem is pointless, so really the hatchet falls somewhere in-between, except some rare cases.
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i guess its more in men's nature to compete in sports and video games (ofc women do this as well)
also girls tend to be more mature
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On November 20 2010 09:55 Slago wrote:I don't wanna sound like I'm trolling, but men are just better at everything, naturally, yes some woman are very good at certain thongs, and not all men are better than all woman, but take the olympics for example, the mens events are bigger, longer, more contact allowed, as well as more exciting. So at the top levels a man can just reach higher than a woman could. After watching the mens halfpipe snowboarding in the olympics, and seeing so many amazing runs, and than shaun white, it was incredible. Than I watched the womans, smaller run, could barely do a 360 let alone anything with a trick, it was either a grab or a 360, no cool stuff. So I just believe that at the top of evrything there is a man. You may disagree but look at, chefs, scientists, athletes, gamers........................ need I go on. again I'm not trying to be sexists it's just what I've observed
You have not observed this in an objective way whatsoever and frankly it's more stupid than it is sexist. We live in a paternal society. All over the world women live the subservient role. If you don't take taht into account it doesnt matter if you conclude that women are better, men are better, or everyone is the same, you don't have information enough to conclude anything
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On November 20 2010 10:37 mcc wrote:
..by neutral factual statement i mean that by stating it I am not saying it is good or bad, I am no assigning any moral value to it..
So by factual part in this context I do not mean that it is necessarily true, but that it does not contain any moral valuation. Whether it is true or not it will not change my moral opinion about anybody.
You say that it won't change your moral opinion about anybody. You say that the statement is not morally charged.
Allow me to present a similar statement:
"Men of African decent are more likely to engage in gang related violence than men of Caucasian decent."
This is an equally true statement - backed up by facts and numbers: statistics. No moral value assigned or attached?
What you fail to realize is that both statements are highly provocative. Saying genetic cocktail X is more lightly to attract skin cancer than genetic cocktail Y is a [mostly] neutral statement. Saying genetic cocktail X is more likely to behave in a certain way than genetic cocktail Y is an inflammatory statement which can't be proved or disproved without isolating a genetically diverse test group from all formative influences of society. Such a study can not be conducted in an ethically sound way therefor the debate is futile and a statement in favor of either camp can only be regarded as an unsubstantiated opinion.
If we allow free room for unsubstantiated opinions in the defining of norms for society and science, we'll inevitably end up reverting to very popular opinions being voiced, such as those advocating racial biology and nationalism because they sound so damn good and right.
What you're of course free to say is "i believe men are born better at chess than women" as everyone is entitled to follow their own religion. You'll be just as right as those claiming the world was created 7000 years ago and no less right than those claiming humans are born with an inherit will to do good and a soul.
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On November 20 2010 11:37 Thrill wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 10:37 mcc wrote:
..by neutral factual statement i mean that by stating it I am not saying it is good or bad, I am no assigning any moral value to it..
So by factual part in this context I do not mean that it is necessarily true, but that it does not contain any moral valuation. Whether it is true or not it will not change my moral opinion about anybody. You say that it won't change your moral opinion about anybody. You say that the statement is not morally charged. Allow me to present a similar statement: "Men of African decent are more likely to engage in gang related violence than men of Caucasian decent." This is an equally true statement - backed up by facts and numbers: statistics. No moral value assigned or attached?
As with my previous example, also in this example neutral factuality depends on the context. So if someone said the statement (btw african descent may mean north african and i am not sure that for them that statement is actually true) above in discussion about social problems of black minority in US (also note that this statement is specific to US) this statement is absolutely neutral. Of course said on a racist forum it would be pretty different story.
On November 20 2010 11:37 Thrill wrote:
What you fail to realize is that both statements are highly provocative. Saying genetic cocktail X is more lightly to attract skin cancer than genetic cocktail Y is a [mostly] neutral statement. Saying genetic cocktail X is more likely to behave in a certain way than genetic cocktail Y is an inflammatory statement which can't be proved or disproved without isolating a genetically diverse test group from all formative influences of society. Such a study can not be conducted in an ethically sound way therefor the debate is futile and a statement in favor of either camp can only be regarded as an unsubstantiated opinion.
The only difference as far as neutrality goes is it seems people's sensibility, because for different biological reasons people are unable to take such statements for what they are, but are actually imputing the moral judgment into them, even if none was there to begin with. I would say tough luck, but it is not worth censuring science because of it. And there are many ways in which such statements can be "proved" (as far as there are any proofs in science). Yes most of them are much harder than doing studies on groups of people. You can for example actually find a gene(s), map all its influences and just describe the mechanism how it produces brain that is better for chess and then find out if it is more prevalent/active in men(yes this is very simplified description). Or you can do indirect observation, how better fare women in chess in more "emancipated" societies compared to others, and so on. And even if there would be no way to "prove" it rigorously, you still can have indices that point one way more than the other, so it would be substantiated opinion.
On November 20 2010 11:37 Thrill wrote:
If we allow free room for unsubstantiated opinions in the defining of norms for society and science, we'll inevitably end up reverting to very popular opinions being voiced, such as those advocating racial biology and nationalism because they sound so damn good and right.
What you're of course free to say is "i believe men are born better at chess than women" as everyone is entitled to follow their own religion. You'll be just as right as those claiming the world was created 7000 years ago and no less right than those claiming humans are born with an inherit will to do good and a soul.
Who said anything about defining norms for society and science ? Wtf are you talking about ? And no I am actually free to say nearly anything I want, what I should not do is pass unsubstantiated
opinions as facts and even opinions that have supporting evidence as scientific facts, I did neither, I think I was pretty careful not to label them as such, and when in error I said so. Unlike you, who called anyone thinking that "chess talent" has biological component basically a retard and (potential) abusive parent.
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Starcraft is war. Warfare is a dominantly male characteristic. Same thing with football. Not many women play football because they have no initiative to play war games. Women can be just as competitive in things especially when it comes to the social market, so it's not a competitiveness concern. Starcraft is antitethical to the nurturing instinct while pandering more to visuospacial killing instincts most men have.
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Just to make one thing clear, person saying that statement about gang violence with the subtext that it is an inherent trait of black people to engage in gang violence should have pretty solid data to back it up, because otherwise he is pretty clearly a racist. So everything in context. Also comparing this to the statement about chess is pretty bad, because playing chess is in itself also neutral act, whereas gang violence clearly is not, just to point this small distinction between those two that you did not mention/notice.
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I would like to attribute the lack of female gamers, namely Korean female gamers, to the general disinterest in video games. Games are typically male centric activities and females tend to gravitate towards games that are geared towards them, like a lot of the dance studio games or RPGs. Just my two KRW.
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On November 20 2010 05:02 WinterNightz wrote:
I feel like the interest level/competitiveness argument pretty well sums it up. But also, I feel like there might be a little bit of the same phenomenon that might be holding foreigners back:
I have no proof, but I feel like for the majority of women interested in playing SC2 (just like the majority of foreigners playing SC2), are probably plagued with an "us vs. them" mentality. Foreign players may think "Man, there's no way I can be as super gosu as the koreans....", just like girls might be thinking, "man, there's no way I can beat the boys at this". And I feel like it's that kind of defeatism that's incredibly poisonous to one's thoughts.
I have no doubt in my mind that if a female decided to practice as much as IdrA, she'd become a super baller. Just like any foreigners who may be doubting themselves: just listen to incontrol's experience at GSL3. Sure he didn't qualify, but from SotG, he realized it's not the impossibility he used to think it was. If you listen to IdrA's reasoning on why Koreans are doing better than foreigners, he's not saying "because they have different hair", he's saying "because they practice more".
The thing is, the "foreigner vs. koreans" is a product of StarCraft, where "boys vs. girls" is a product of centuries upon centuries of human society. So while the first defeatist mentality is easier to overcome on a personal level, the second probably isn't. I would expect this is what's resulting in most interested female players getting themselves down mentally, where all they need to do is spend 8 million hours a day training like everyone else.
And I am by no means saying female players don't try hard enough. I'm just saying that this kind of thinking makes it much easier to give up altogether.
repping this post cause of the validity of its claims. human beings regardless of gender and sex can do anything we set our minds to. sounds corny but it's true.
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Didn't read the thread but my guess is girls lack competitiviness. Men tend to do better in almost every sport even if it doesn't come down to muscular strength (shooting, billiards, chess, poker..). Ofc, there are some exceptions, but they are just exceptions..
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Funny thing is I know at least know 20 female gamers, who have no problem talking about gaming with fellow gamers and love every single thing about gaming, but as soon as a non gamers "outsiders" ask them about their gaming hobby they quickly change the subject.
"People who don't game won't understand, they will judge me"
That shit still needs some kind of revolution.
The same kind of revolution that caused people born before the 80s to finally admit in public they are still enjoying games. Without feeling ashamed.
I would love to see a girl/woman win a tournament like the gsl, if even to give my gaming mum or mrs Plott the self esteem to admit outside gaming communities that they love gaming
Yeah sure... women and men are very different..
.... but also very equal. We often achieve goals in different ways, but we are still the only apes that can drive a car, understand complex math, play starcraft Even if slightly different, both our brains are the most complex structures in the whole known universe, Nothing else comes even close. Dolphins? Apes? Sure pal sure...
(by the way, a personal side note: a big fuck you to all countries, goverments that treat women as lesser than men)
Anyway...
There are millions of female gamers, and when a non gamer asks them if they like gaming, they will deny. (not all of them but 90% at least)
THAT is the real problem. Not skills. Not testosteron. Not competivity.
The problem is shame.
Power to the gaming girls. I don't care how you look. I don't care how others judge you.
If you are a girl and proud to be a gamer I love you. Ignore the general public's opinion. Ignore the trolls. Continue to do what you love to do, hopefully for many many years, and you will pave the way for next generations
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I agree with person above me
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Zandar, reading that made me very proud to be a girl gamer. I actually read it at work and swelled with pride, then explained to my workmates (mostly female non-gamers) what you had said and how much it means. They were happy for me, coz they're awesome people.
You're very right. I don't deny I game, but I don't go out of my way to bring it up if I'm not with like-minded people (read: often). I'm not ashamed, but I do try to hide my gender in game, in forums, just because I don't want the associated shit that comes with it.
That said, Team Liquid is the first place I've felt I could even bring up my gender.
Thank you so much. May others eventually follow your lead.
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That's like saying why aren't there enough men in the nail polishing business?
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Games are considered as a boys only club, same goes for cars. Sure there are females that like to do these kind of things, but they are rare.
As for the 40% statistics, the count the number of people playing free online games.. so yeah, farmville, bejeweled ect.
Also consider how many men are into Horses, makeup and clothes, which are pretty much a girl club.
And for some reason, males focus/try harder and are less likely to give up when put up with a hard advanced task. I'm not saying girls are stupid, just less competitive in nature than men. Basically, men like to fight and prove their skills, by nature.
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EPT
