I don't believe that. And you don't really know any of that.
Interesting that you know what I don't really know.
But regardless of the cause of differences between sexes, I believe the following assessment is true: The difference between the average of all men and the average of all women is smaller than the average degree of difference between any two individuals.
Averaging what, exactly?
Time for a math lesson.
Let us take N values of x (x1, x2, x3, ... xN) and N values of y (y1, y2, y3, ... yN).
Average value of x is (x1+x2+x3+...+xN)/N, average value of y is (y1+y2+y3+...+yN)/N.
"Difference of the averages" is ((x1+...+xN) - (y1+...+yN))/N
= ((x1-y1) + (x2-y2) + ... + (xN - yN))/N
= "Average of the differences"
This is simplified as the differences of ordered pairs. It generalizes to taking differences of any x and any y. For normal arithmetic means, averaging differences is exactly the same as finding the difference of the averages.
...
*ahem*
You pose and posture and tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about. Then you lay on some pseudo-mathematical BS about how the "difference of the averages" is somehow less than the "average of the differences". Math suggests that they're always the same. Unless of course you are "really" talking about some special way of taking averages, or perhaps you meant to compare standard deviations or some such.
Now - PERHAPS - you are imagining largely overlapping Gaussian curves with a small difference between the peaks and wide spreads. I might even be generous and grant that that is what you intended to say. But no, you had to go insist that I don't know what I'm talking about, which is about as rude as you can get in polite rhetoric. So, no, I'm not going to be generous in this instance, and instead say, not only do you not know what you are talking about, I have proved that you don't know what you are talking about.
A word of advice: do
not insist on precision unless you can offer the same. You have a habit of doing this, requiring others to be precise while you talk in vague airy tones, alluding to intellectual rigor without actually employing it, occasionally linking books or articles that you couldn't possibly defend if you were asked.
It's OK to say, "I don't believe that." I'm good with that. Disagreement is healthy. Intellectual posturing, on the other hand, will earn a very strong rhetorical smackdown from me when merited.
(I know my tone is rather harsh, here. Intellectual posturing tends to get my goat.)
This means the relative impact of sex is small. When it comes to making a bet on another individual's behavior (or thoughts), it would be unwise to base a significant portion of the wager on that individual's sex. If you were going to analyze an individual, you'd extract much more value for your time out of analyzing many aspects other than their sex/gender.
Straw man.
I am not asserting that by knowing that whether an individual is male or female that I know the vast majority of that individual's personality. You might as well assert that I have a habit of kicking puppies, and advise me that kicking puppies is a bad thing to do.
Making inferences from the subconscious is very hazardous territory. The very nature of what the subconscious is means it is often highly questionable that one can make accurate assertions about the subconscious. Many claims about it are circular or a priori. This gives us bizarre claims like Freud's idea that men harbor a sexual desire for their mothers, and the rationalization that the feeling of disgust that most men have at the thought of having sex with their mother is actually push back coming from the shame they experience over that subconscious desire. It's easier to explain how anything is yet more proof of the undetectable subconscious. And it's bunk.
That being said, even if we do try to talk about the subconscious, we need to be clear on what that means. Something I find odd is that a lot of people seem think that the subconscious has some special relationship to evolutionary inherited traits. But it doesn't. Subconscious thoughts can be the product of socialization.
Dude, this isn't a scientific journal. We're laymen talking about psychology, very often in rather cartoonish terms. Notice that I generally do NOT chastise other members of this forum for speaking imprecisely, especially on topics such as these: the purpose is to find connections together, not to "prove" anything one way or the other. We do not have the tools for proof, here, on these topics. They're just discussions.
I agree that subconscious thoughts can be the product of socialization. They can also be the product of training. They can also be the the product of evolution. They can also be the product of one's sex. And yes, it's complicated, and there are very few one-to-one correspondences to be found. I wasn't arguing that it's that simple. Rather, all I was saying that even women who consciously believe that they want a man who is brave enough to cry, their unconscious side is going to put a check on that and say, "Yes, but only up to a point ..."
