I mean, I agree that this is obviously a thing, but I continue to maintain hope in the possibility of actually reasoning about sex differences in the physical universe, rather than being resigned to living in the world of warring narratives. I think the named effect sizes help? (I try to be clear about saying “d ≈ 0.6”, not “Men are from mars.”)
But what I mean is that the research programs such as people-things and similar that I have seen so far are not good enough, and are not attempting to become good enough sufficiently well that you can expect to just fund them and wait for results.
Not because it is fundamentally impossible, but because the challenges are not taken seriously enough.
I absolutely agree that it’s critical to recognize that it’s often both. (I’m less sure about how often it’s “neither”. What stops people from converging?)
I think if due to priors, the sides have reasons to distrust each other, but the distrust leads to ignoring each other instead of leading to conflict, both sides can remain honest and rational (rather than degenerating into dishonesty due to conflict) while not realizing that the other sides are honest and rational, and so end up not converging?
I agree.
I think also a lot of it is just down to doing better research, including better psychometrics and more qualitative investigations.
But what I mean is that the research programs such as people-things and similar that I have seen so far are not good enough, and are not attempting to become good enough sufficiently well that you can expect to just fund them and wait for results.
Not because it is fundamentally impossible, but because the challenges are not taken seriously enough.
I think if due to priors, the sides have reasons to distrust each other, but the distrust leads to ignoring each other instead of leading to conflict, both sides can remain honest and rational (rather than degenerating into dishonesty due to conflict) while not realizing that the other sides are honest and rational, and so end up not converging?