Why aren't most women as deep as most men (humans, feelings, anxiety)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Um...where does it say high IQ people are more likely to wax philosophical?
MENSA? If they let me in, it can't be much.
"Wax philosophical" strikes me as pejorative. Small children are capable of asking an unending string of "why" questions. Let's say "be philosophers" instead (which is the connection I meant to imply by bringing up IQ in the first place). All the greatest philosophers were/are highly intelligent. Perhaps in the case of a few their genius wouldn't have correlated perfectly with IQ performance...for some reason I have Nietzsche in mind here. Probably because the value of his insights was more due to creativity than pure logical reasoning, and the latter is what is measured by IQ moreso than the former (I'm oversimplifying, but that's nothing new). I've seen "after-the-fact" IQ estimates of various philosophers where everyone was assigned something 160+...no potential flaws in assigning a dead person an IQ score, right? I have no idea about the methodology or lack thereof, heh. All caveats aside, though, "is a noteworthy philosopher" would surely correlate with "possesses an abnormally high IQ". Dead Voltaire being assigned some massive IQ score...that may be an entirely speculative exercise, but I think more people are arguing with the idea of doing such a thing as opposed to the conclusion.
Are all geniuses concerned with being great philosophers? No, not even close. chessgeek is entirely correct to point out all the shallow intelligent people that one may find (and given that he lives in California, I'm sure he never lacks for access to such people). But, even regarding your quote, you have to have a certain level of intelligence to not settle for commonly accepted answers..."questioning conventional wisdom" would obviously correlate with IQ, and "questioning conventional wisdom", while is could just lead someone to be an uber-pragmatic innovator like Franklin or Edison (or take your pick of a modern tech giant), it would also lead people to seek to form their own philosophies...or engage in some large-scale "waxing philosophical" as I guess I'll say, ever begrudgingly. Sure, my mentally disabled uncle recently remarked to me "life sucks, and then you die"...but it's not like he coined that. I asked him where he heard that (and I largely agree with the sentiment, for what it's worth), and he thought about it for a bit and concluded that one of his brothers had said it once. If you define waxing philosophical as reciting folk idioms that have long been recited, well, now we're weakening the correlation with IQ a bit. The people who actually make intellectual breakthroughs, though, who shape the way others think...very high IQ correlates with these sorts. It's just a matter of then refining what sort of breakthroughs were talking about....
Haven't had any coffee yet so I apologize for any subpar word choices I've made here
BTW, it's worth noting that most of the women philosophers mentioned here, are/were also noted "feminists" of one sort or another… unlike traditional 'pure' philosophers, such as Kant, Aristotle, Zeno, Confucius, Descartes, Camus, Kierkegaard, Spinoza, et al. It's as though women can't even ponder philosophy and the "meaning of life", without bringing in their "specialness"!
Have you stopped to consider why these women philosophers were feminists?
At their foundation, deep, intellectual pursuits require two things: time and silence. Both are in short supply in a household with many children. Ultimately, feminism made it both possible and socially acceptable for women to control their fertility.
The premise is a bit much. But starting there I would observe that women generally have their feet more firmly planted in daily life. ... A good place to start some thinking on the topic though. But in today's PC world, forget about using this as a discussion starter in English 1A!
That's pretty much the problem.
The OP may have a point... or not.
But it's pretty much impossible to discuss the topic in most forums because a lot of people get really outraged and we live in a time when the outraged, the intelectual bullies are never ashamed of shutting discussion down.
They can't do that if the guy is monopolizing the conversation, and the woman can hardly get a word in edgewise. Where there's potential romantic interest, it's normal for people to be curious about each other, and to want to get to know each other better. The way this normally works in conversation is that they ask questions of each other, though each is certainly welcome to chime in and share info. But women don't normally just begin to expound on their lives, work, philosophy and interests like a professor delivering a lecture. Many men, for some reason, do. It's kind of rude, and makes conversation difficult. Conversation, by definition, is a give-and-take. Without that, it's a monologue.
When someone is smart and has interesting things to say, I enjoy listening to them.
I've been on dates when the woman had interesting things to say and interesting points of view to share and she shared them, like a professor and that was perfectly *fine* with me.
I've been on other dates where she wouldn't say anything unless I asked a question. I felt like I was intruding. That same woman had no problem going on a 2nd date with me so it seems that from her point of view the 1st date went well. During the 2nd date she again shared nothing and had me pry answers out of her. She had nothing interesting to say about her doctorate even though her being a PhD student was one fo the main reasons I was interested in going out with her.It was annoying.
Hmmmm. It's fun to be a hater and broad paint a certain gender but help me figure out how our male neighbor with a new baby tells his wife that he doesn't want to be married anymore. He prefers to go out and party while his wife is left raising their child alone. Real deep isn't it? How about this scenario. Men have this good old boy network and have suppressed women from advancing in society for generations. When I was a child there were very few women working in the 60's including my mother. Her biggest ambition for me was to be a secretary. I laughed and said that I would have a secretary. Capable, deep women have been evolving over the last half century but it's been an uphill battle. Thanks to men.
Hmmmm. It's fun to be a hater and broad paint a certain gender but help me figure out how our male neighbor with a new baby tells his wife that he doesn't want to be married anymore. He prefers to go out and party while his wife is left raising their child alone. Real deep isn't it? How about this scenario. Men have this good old boy network and have suppressed women from advancing in society for generations. When I was a child there were very few women working in the 60's including my mother. Her biggest ambition for me was to be a secretary. I laughed and said that I would have a secretary. Capable, deep women have been evolving over the last half century but it's been an uphill battle. Thanks to men.
honestly the attitudes here are so disgruntling and scary that I just can't respond anymore. What is passed off as "fact" is scary too.
It's interesting how people (probably the men here) think the women are just reacting and angry and trying to suppress the discussion, probably because (they think) there is some truth to it and we want to somehow deflect that truth.
So troubling to me on a very DEEP level lol.
These are the silent attitudes we face in our own workplaces and relationships.
It's funny to me because its absolutely NOT true. The author (ahem, OP) said this was all based on his first hand observation ... well yeah exactly. My opinion is too and I could say the exact opposite -- that men are not very deep (and did so in my first post on the matter). That is MY experience but I'm smart enough to know that my experience is personal and weighted by many different factors, including how I select the people around me.
In my experience Men have been less deep than women by a long shot. I'm smart enough to know that probably has a lot to do with how I relate to my own gender socially, more often than men and it doesn't mean all men are roving idiots with no interest in life except cars and sports.
I maintain the fact is few people are really that deep, and they have a harder time finding each other.
BTW, it's worth noting that most of the women philosophers mentioned here, are/were also noted "feminists" of one sort or another… unlike traditional 'pure' philosophers, such as Kant, Aristotle, Zeno, Confucius, Descartes, Camus, Kierkegaard, Spinoza, et al. It's as though women can't even ponder philosophy and the "meaning of life", without bringing in their "specialness"!
What does this have to do with anything?! Were you really expecting male philosophers to be feminists? Women philosophers are women. It's natural that some, at least, would be concerned with their lot in life, which historically has never been good. And why is "feminist" hurled as some kind of accusation, anyway? Do people accuse Martin Luther King Jr. of being racist or "Blackist" just for wanting to improve his people's status in society? Cut the cr@p.
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 01-27-2014 at 11:51 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
