Born to do Math 144 – Nice-to-Haves
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Born To Do Math
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/15
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What would be something that would be nice to have as an evolved mental function that is not evolved into us?
Rosner: You can look at the stuff that we have evolved for ourselves via apps. An infallible sense of direction would be good. I am always arguing everyone should be forced to take statistics. So, maybe, a more developed understanding of and ability to apply risks.
An ability to find more subtle patterns in big data. This is coming. We won’t need this in our brains because we will get it in our apps. You can always say various apps built into your head would be helpful.
Jacobsen: What about perceptual functions?
Rosner: People can always use more power to get social clues and interpersonal clues. Some people are really good at reading other people. That’s a good skill to have. It’s a good skill. It means that some people will have more partners than other people.
I call it anti-Asperger’s. Some schmoozy people, especially where I live in L.A., are at home with asking for more from people and then getting it, because they are able to judge what people are willing to give.
Although, I may be overestimating people’s social skills. When I first had this thought, it was before MeToo. What looked liked increased social skill, ten years ago, to me, I’ve hit on a lot fewer women than people I know.
Some of this I attribute to shyness or fear. Some of this I attributed to being less charming. Now, in the light of MeToo, maybe, I was wrong about that because, maybe, the people who I admired or envied for getting with a bunch of women.
Maybe, they were bigger assholes. Maybe, they were not getting away with anything and the women were thinking the guys were assholes. Maybe, they weren’t getting away with as much as I’d thought. But it would be nice – all that aside – to be able to perceive more of what people are thinking.
Jacobsen: H.L. Mencken described many men as having elephantine emotions [Laughing].
Rosner: Do you mean huge and plodding?
Jacobsen: Huge, plodding, blatant, cloddy, just uncouth generally.
Rosner: Yes, I’ve heard this described in Women’s Studies as men having less impulse control.
Jacobsen: What does this mean in a mental context? Why is this happening way more? Are we talking about more sociological reasons or more innate reasons leading to those sociological/sociocultural consequences?
Rosner: Emotions, in the context we’re talking about, are judged by action. If someone is like Emily Dickinson shut up in her house, we don’t know what emotions she’s having compared to somebody who is getting in bar fights, or road rage incidents.
So, we can make an argument that guys are more action-oriented. You can trace this to the frontal lobe dementia. You lose your Superego and act on pure ID to put it in obsolete terms. Guys have a lower threshold to act on what they’re feeling.
Jacobsen: Men do develop slower. We know that.
Rosner: You can argue men are generally crappier. Men have less quality to control in a lot of areas.
Jacobsen: You mean this not as a moral judgment, but as a biological descriptor.
Rosner: Men are, you can argue, more disposable. My wife hikes with a bunch of people her age and little older. Like half of their husbands are fucking dead!
Jacobsen: What from, for them?
Rosner: One had a sclerosing disease. He was in a parking garage and had just walked out from pitching a T.V. show and dropped dead that was hardening parts of his body. I take super good control of my body. I just had cancer.
It is a small sample size. When you talk about sex or gender differences, you always run the risk of over-generalizing or making conclusions that are too big on a small sample size, or culturally limited sample sizes. I don’t know in general.
Would there be a geometry of lower impulse control? Yes, you could do it, even without a geometry of consciousness of that.
Jacobsen: It would be less integrated geometry. It would be shorter pathways and less integrated.
Rosner: Yes, some people like to argue a thicker corpus callosum in women leads to a more integrated consciousness and a more even-keeled personality. But that’s probably over-concluding.
Jacobsen: Will this imply with greater self-control and greater awareness of a situation that women would be better able to conceal emotions better in terms of propriety and social dynamics?
Rosner: In our world, it is harder to determine. Women are smaller and weaker than men. A smaller and weaker person will be more prudent. If the average woman was 6’1″ and weighed 185lbs, would women be as asshole-ish as men? There’s too much going on there.
There’s too much cultural loading to reach any super-definitive conclusions. There’s, at least, one member or former member of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team who has been dinged more than once for spousal abuse.
She’s a big, strong, angry, at times, person. So, is that a brain thing or a hierarchy thing? Too many variables.
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