BioWare - Christina Norman Leaves Bioware

[SAGO]

the truth baby

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Who, me ?

Or anyone else ?

 

[JDR13]

Thank God that debate is finally over. I'm not sure if I could handle seeing JemyM use the term "strawman" one more time…

 

[holeraw]

So... did you guys hear about Christina Norman? The nice lady who designed the sublime gameplay of Mass Effect 2? She got married I hear.

 

[HiddenX]

maybe she's a "strawwoman" …

 

[hishadow]

maybe she's a "strawwoman" …

Or a scarecrow.

 

[ManWhoJaped]

So… did you guys hear about Christina Norman? The nice lady who designed the sublime gameplay of Mass Effect 2? She got married I hear.

Sublime is not one of the words that came to mind, but it goes back to what I said before. People think different, men and women think different, and like different things. I'm happy for you that you find it sublime but sad for me I found it to be such crap.

 

[JemyM]

10 Big Differences Between Men’s and Women’s Brains

I took the time with this article now. Ouch.

Let's begin with the website. Here we have a real example of a website that claims themselves to be masters or experts. From the first page one can look for degrees and the website seems to list a couple of universities. I look these up. Their wikipedia articles lists quite alot of wrongdoings and give an overall impression of not being reputable. Besides this, you find nothing about the websites credentials, nor the credentials on "Amber Hensley". A googlesearch on her name shows that it's a pupular name, but if she was a professor or similar she would have popped up early.

Now lets look at the first block.

It begins with a statement, which it doesn't back up, that the differences are "well-documented". It then points out that "Experts have discovered". The scientific community never call themselves Experts. Calling oneself an Expert gives an impression of being uneducated. Interestingly, this is exactly whats done here because the word "Expert" is LINKED TO THE WEBSITE.

Now look at the sources linked from this article. Several links again go TO THE SAME WEBSITE. Half if not more of the links go to articles or books without any link to science, including one that go to a psychic medium. Many of the sources and references seems to be googled without any source criticism at all, including articles from companies who published something on their website to support the product they are selling.

As a whole, the article only have some links to pubmed, awesome, but then it interprets the implications of the information in a way that is not how a neuroscientist or biological psychology would interpret it. It is for example true that men have more brainmass, but anyone who knows how the brain works knows that size means nothing more than more neurons and even the smallest brain have more neurons than a person will use in their lifetime.

While this doesn't debunk the statements made in the article, it makes the time and effort finding out what's behind each statement kind of meaningless.

 

[JemyM]

Let's sum up this thread.

In this thread one can see several attempts to support the position that women are illogical (and thinks different than men). The first thing to note is that all participants are men, and had various success in supporting their position. Among these were few attempts to back up their position (cudos to those) but even more illogic behavior, attempts to derail and even a case of utter denial.

Prejudice have illogic thinking in it's heart, the lack of need to be consistent, coherent or having good support for ones position, just numerous ways to dodge, skip or deny any reason to have their legs on solid ground. Empirically this actually gives evidence that one shouldn't expect logic from a group of men and especially a group of men who claim to be logical.

And before it's said, I confess and put it out there that I have as high chance of thinking wrong than anyone else. It's by that confession I live and it's by accepting the potential flaws in my cognitive functions I am able to correct myself overtime.

 

[HiddenX]

My analysis:

a) it was a rather uninteresting newsbit
b) Moriendor wants to make some fun
c) the thread gets hijacked and a pseudo intelectual discussion is starting ...

In this thread one can see several attempts to support the position that women are illogical (and thinks different than men).

-> incomplete summary -> some posters were pro-women's logic, too.

JemyM: you want us to generalize less and to back up the positions.

But no one is more generalizing than you:

Empirically this actually gives evidence that one shouldn't expect logic from a group of men and especially a group of men who claim to be logical.

I still have to find the sources of your theses in this thread.

 

[JemyM]

I still have to find the sources of your theses in this thread.

"Women think differently" is the positive thesis in this thread.

If positive statements are held valid until evidence have shown them to be wrong we can as well believe in unicorns, trolls, ghosts and whatever.

Since positibe statements are easy to state and the negative can't be proven it's common conduct to begin with the null hypothesis and go from there.

That said, I mentioned Big Five, a very well supported theory in Personality Psychology. The revelation in that theory is that people of similar character traits (studied in 44 different cultures) think alike, regardless of gender, culture, origin or skin color. Whether or not someone is extrovert or not will tell you more about that persons life and behavior than gender. If you want a logic individual you should begin to look at their level of conscientousness. If you want an empathic individual you should look at agreeableness. Unconscientous or agreeable males are fairly frequent despite breaking cultural expectations, same with conscientous or unagreeable females.

If you can't think of a conscientous, ordered and stoic woman or emotional, empathic irrational man on the spot you should get out more. The former are easily found at a university, in business or any field demanding an ordered, controlled and strategical approach to the world. The latter can be found in agressive gangs, in helpcare, as priests in churches etc.

 

[HiddenX]

In my experience, in the world I live -> modern industrial - not religious Germany

1) woman think, speak and act differently than man, not better or worse -> differently (most professions have not a 50/50 distribution between men and women in Germany)
2) I don't know if this has educational or biological reasons - I just observe it
3) I use the difference sometimes to my advantage in project teams - a good mix of men and women with different specialisations and problem management approaches leads very often to faster and better results
4) exceptions prove the rule - you can find men thinking like women and women thinking like men - but there are a very rare to find (in my world)

 

[DArtagnan]

That's pretty much where I come out, Hidden

 

[Thrasher]

Yep, me too.

 

[JemyM]

In my experience, in the world I live -> modern industrial - not religious Germany

1) woman think, speak and act differently than man, not better or worse -> differently (most professions have not a 50/50 distribution between men and women in Germany)
2) I don't know if this has educational or biological reasons - I just observe it
3) I use the difference sometimes to my advantage in project teams - a good mix of men and women with different specialisations and problem management approaches leads very often to faster and better results
4) exceptions prove the rule - you can find men thinking like women and women thinking like men - but there are a very rare to find (in my world)

I live in the most gender equal country on earth and spend my days within the academia. The younger the generation you get, the more insignificant the old differences get. It's impossible to mention a single charactertrait which is universal or near universal between all boys and all girls, the variations within each gender is much greater than between them (and there is quite alot of variation).

That said, I usually skip anecdotes. I have enough cognitive psychology in my backpack to know how easy I do mistakes as a human being if I trust my "experience" and "memory". If I really want to know, I need to really try to track both hits and misses, else the risk of confirmation bias latch on very quickly.

 

[JemyM]

Been discussing the article with some other sceptics.

1. Human relationships. Women tend to communicate more effectively than men, focusing on how to create a solution that works for the group, talking through issues, and utilizes non-verbal cues such as tone, emotion, and empathy whereas men tend to be more task-oriented, less talkative, and more isolated. Men have a more difficult time understanding emotions that are not explicitly verbalized, while women tend to intuit emotions and emotional cues. These differences explain why men and women sometimes have difficulty communicating and why men-to-men friendships look different from friendships among women.

This might be based on Conellan;
article from 2000:

Infants were propped up in a
crib or on a parent’s lap and shown, side by side, a live, active and expressive person and
a similarly sized inanimately moving object. Male infants looked longer at the object
than the person, whereas female infants looked longer at the person than the object.

What is often forgotten is that the experiment was old in 1974, with the difference that Conellan is the only one who managed to get significant results.

2. Left brain vs. both hemispheres. Men tend to process better in the left hemisphere of the brain while women tend to process equally well between the two hemispheres. This difference explains why men are generally stronger with left-brain activities and approach problem-solving from a task-oriented perspective while women typically solve problems more creatively and are more aware of feelings while communicating.

Mixing Apples and Oranges: There are gender differences in lateral thinking, and differences in amygdala. They aren't neccessary related. Often quoted is Cahill et al who tried to test the hypothesis that amygdala is differently laterally between gender but few seems to have read the article since the findings are weak (also pointed out in the article). The authors themselves present several interpretions of the result. One few bothered to read is;

While these findings point strongly to the existence of sex-related differences in amygdala
participation in emotionally influenced memory, they do not explain why these
differences exist. Several theoretical possibilities can be considered, some derived from
more general studies of lateralized processing of emotional material, but none of these
possibilities appear capable of accounting for the present results.

3. Mathematical abilities. An area of the brain called the inferior-parietal lobule (IPL) is typically significantly larger in men, especially on the left side, than in women. This section of the brain is thought to control mental mathematical ability, and probably explains why men frequently perform higher in mathematical tasks than do women. Interestingly, this is the same area of Einstein’s brain that was discovered to be abnormally large. The IPL also processes sensory information, and the larger right side in women allows them to focus on, "specific stimuli, such as a baby crying in the night."

This is not without merit, once you skip the title. Boys and girls have differences in abilities related to math (Pinker, Kotovsky). These differences have no effect on school and doesn't show boys do better than girls either.Kotovsky and Baillargeon actually showed the opposite when it comes to estimating the relationship between the force one throws an item and how far it goes. Even worse, in countries with higher gender equality girls tend to do better than boys according to a recent international study. The reason is explained to be overconfidence.

The part about Einstein is a myth.

4. Reaction to stress. Men tend to have a "fight or flight" response to stress situations while women seem to approach these situations with a "tend and befriend" strategy. Psychologist Shelley E. Taylor coined the phrase "tend and befriend" after recognizing that during times of stress women take care of themselves and their children (tending) and form strong group bonds (befriending). The reason for these different reactions to stress is rooted in hormones. The hormone oxytocin is released during stress in everyone. However, estrogen tends to enhance oxytocin resulting in calming and nurturing feelings whereas testosterone, which men produce in high levels during stress, reduces the effects of oxytocin.

On tend and befriend or in psychological litterature there are no research that connects the phenomenon with the central nerve system.

5. Language. Two sections of the brain responsible for language were found to be larger in women than in men, indicating one reason that women typically excel in language-based subjects and in language-associated thinking. Additionally, men typically only process language in their dominant hemisphere, whereas women process language in both hemispheres. This difference offers a bit of protection in case of a stroke. Women may be able to recover more fully from a stroke affecting the language areas in the brain while men may not have this same advantage.

This seems to be valid.

6. Emotions. Women typically have a larger deep limbic system than men, which allows them to be more in touch with their feelings and better able to express them, which promotes bonding with others. Because of this ability to connect, more women serve as caregivers for children. The down side to this larger deep limbic system is that it also opens women up to depression, especially during times of hormonal shifts such as after childbirth or during a woman’s menstrual cycle.

There are some articles that supports sexual diformism in CNS. When it comes to the limbic system there are those who points out that these structures are dimorfed as a result of stress hormones and the circumstances women (by non-biological reason) often lives in, around the globe. There are differences, but none that supports the interpretions about children, berrypicking etc that are usually mentioned.

7. Brain size. Typically, men’s brains are 11-12% bigger than women’s brains. This size difference has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence, but is explained by the difference in physical size between men and women. Men need more neurons to control their greater muscle mass and larger body size, thus generally have a larger brain.

Tss.

8. Pain. Men and women perceive pain differently. In studies, women require more morphine than men to reach the same level of pain reduction. Women are also more likely to vocalize their pain and to seek treatment for their pain than are men. The area of the brain that is activated during pain is the amygdala, and researchers have discovered that in men, the right amygdala is activated and in women, the left amygdala is activated. The right amygdala has more connections with areas of the brain that control external functions while the right amygdala has more connections with internal functions. This difference probably explains why women perceive pain more intensely than do men.

Well. There is alot of debate on the experience of pain and how it's related to pain. One can believe what one wants atm.

9. Spatial ability. Men typically have stronger spatial abilities, or being able to mentally represent a shape and its dynamics, whereas women typically struggle in this area. Medical experts have discovered that women have a thicker parietal region of the brain, which hinders the ability to mentally rotate objects–an aspect of spatial ability. Research has shown this ability in babies as young as 5 months old, negating any ideas that these abilities were strengthened by environmental influences.

True.

10. Susceptibility to disorders. Because of the way men and women use the two hemispheres of the brain differently, there are some disorders that men and women are susceptible to in different ways. Men are more apt to have dyslexia or other language problems. If women have dyslexia, they are more likely to compensate for it. Women, on the other hand, are more susceptible to mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. While handedness is not a disorder, these brain tendencies also explain why more men are left-handed than are women. Men are also more likely to be diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and Tourette’s Syndrome.

Mostly true (and uninteresting). One should probably save braincells and skip the reference the article-writer used though.

 

[JemyM]

And I haven't mentioned it, the "men logical", "men better at math", "females more empathic" etc have it's roots in the 19th century biology. In this era it was a common belief that one could determine character traits by looking at the physical body. The "sinister look" still used in some movies was based on these ideas.

One idea that came out of this was that males harder and square-like body also meant that their personality/character was both hardy and structured (logic). The females softer body meant that the female personality/character was soft and her reasoning "curvy". When ideas are widespread, people tend to adapt to them even if they doesn't work or makes no sense.

 

[HiddenX]

Another interesting article:

Thinking Differently: Differences Between Men and Women

With a very good summary quote:

“there are very few jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina, and all the other jobs should be open to both sexes.”

 

[ManWhoJaped]

Where's the group of men, exactly? 5 random guys who disagree with you and whose opinions intersect about 30-50% even on this subject?

You are worse than limbaugh for accusing people loudly of exactly what you do to take off the pressure of examining what's obvious, that you are the one generalizing here and making blanket judgements. You also show zero logic, sorry to say.

I don't think I've seen such a string of illogic put together at one time without bringing in religion somehow.

I won't carp on the logicalness or illogicalness of women, but I disagree entirely that there is no such thing as types of thinking that men and women tend towards.

But the reason people really get excited, why this annoys me is there is a larger agenda here, which is personified in Sweden quite well so I should not be surprised to hear this hippy nonsense from that corner.

According to some people, not only are men and women equal in all ways, not only are all types of people equal in all ways (hell for argument's sake I will concede both points, though in fact north and south dakotans are quite different from each other let alone manhattanites and tanzanikans), but each person is equal in all ways to any other. And not in the sense we all have a special spark or a soul or basic human rights which again I'll agree with in principle to avoid a crappy world, but in a really literal sense.

I'd also say most women I know aside from family members do have this kind of crazy belief. The problem you get here is if you take this to an extreme you quickly lead to some very poor decision making. Druggies? They are just not loved enough, lets spend a few billion on clinics and they will be fine. Their kids are just as good as everyone's. Or like the wives of my coworkers who go on about how bad it is for them to have babies when there's starving kids in africa or wherever. Great idea, have your most intelligent people fail to breed, and then spend all their resources on random third world illiterates. Sure maybe there is an einstein in there but how many losers are in there?

Your own country does this on a very large scale. So you take some of the most successful and supposedly intelligent people in the world, and replace them with refugees who've never lived in a real civilization, never had an ancestor in a real civilization.

Likewise with how gangs are endemic in the US. Instead of recognizing these are bad people, we treat them like wayward ten year olds. Nevermind most of them are sociopaths, forget that their kids fostered onto women who live on welfare will grow up as bad or worse. Heck, let's support those poor kids and make special schools just for them, and further we'll strip any good schools out to make sure it's all equal, even if it means taking money donated by parents away so it can be used for the hordes of administrators of the school system, and really they don't get paid much for how many employees they have. 150K is not that much my husband's a doctor and he makes way more than that.

Yadda yadda yadda 500 years later brawndo has the electrolytes plants crave!

Actually to me it feels not much less dumb than that already, and dumber by the day.

 

[KapitanUnterhosen]

Allow me to derail this thread further. From all of us male gamers: Let's hope future female game designers will follow the trail of past ones!

I see your Adventure Box and raise you an Ion Storm level designer:

Stevie Case