Althouse: A response.

July 10, 2006

A response.

Eugene Volokh responds to my "oh, please."

MORE: In vlog form!

19 comments:

Patrick Wahl said...: Is it possible men are more driven? Men often strike me as more narrowly focused than women, or if you prefer, women have more balance between a personal and business life. Look at the upper reaches of the corporate world, dominated by men who put in very long hours.; 7/10/06, 11:32 AM
Ann Althouse said...: The collection of individuals is so small and so minimally skewed toward the male that it's a terrible basis for making generalizations about the sexes! Hey, I'm a girl, but I can still see that's damned unscientific. If we're going to just speculate, well, how about not doing it?; 7/10/06, 11:43 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: I agree with Eugene that 1.2 to the fifth power is nearly 2.5, and that the differences can most likely be attributed to this dynamic. In other words, it isn't one thing, but rather, a combination of several different factors, among which I would suggest may be:
- at the ends of the bell curve for IQ, males predominate. Essentially same mean, but slightly broader standard deviation. Most SC clerks are probably at least 2, and more likely 3 SDs out from the mean.
- women do, on average, try to balance their lives a bit more, and it takes a fairly unbalanced person to make it to the top of their Harvard or Yale law school class.
- lower court judges are still predominently male, and probably prefer, at least by a little bit, male clerks. You may not find that many real chauvenists, but tenure is for life, and there are some out there.; 7/10/06, 11:49 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Ann, but that is what we do all the time - speculate.

Seriously, I don't see a resolution to this problem for exactly the reason you suggest - the numbers are so small that the noise will defeat any attempt at a valid answer.; 7/10/06, 11:52 AM
Patrick Wahl said...: Oh, you want actual substance eh. There is this from a debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke. Much more at the link, but this is pertinent to what I theorized.

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge160.html

Just one example. In a famous long-term study of mathematically precocious youth, 1,975 youngsters were selected in 7th grade for being in the top 1% of ability in mathematics, and then followed up for more than two decades. These men and women are certainly equally talented. And if anyone has ever been encouraged in math and science, these kids were. Both genders: they are equal in their levels of achievement, and they report being equally satisfied with the course of their lives. Nonetheless there are statistical differences in what they say is important to them. There are some things in life that the females rated higher than males, such as the ability to have a part-time career for a limited time in one's life; living close to parents and relatives; having a meaningful spiritual life; and having strong friendships. And there are some things in life that the males rated higher than the females. They include having lots of money; inventing or creating something; having a full-time career; and being successful in one's line of work. It's worth noting that studies of highly successful people find that single-mindedness and competitiveness are recurring traits in geniuses (of both sexes).; 7/10/06, 12:12 PM
Patrick Wahl said...: Oh, you want actual substance eh. There is this from a debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke. Much more at the link, but this is pertinent to what I theorized.

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge160.html

Just one example. In a famous long-term study of mathematically precocious youth, 1,975 youngsters were selected in 7th grade for being in the top 1% of ability in mathematics, and then followed up for more than two decades. These men and women are certainly equally talented. And if anyone has ever been encouraged in math and science, these kids were. Both genders: they are equal in their levels of achievement, and they report being equally satisfied with the course of their lives. Nonetheless there are statistical differences in what they say is important to them. There are some things in life that the females rated higher than males, such as the ability to have a part-time career for a limited time in one's life; living close to parents and relatives; having a meaningful spiritual life; and having strong friendships. And there are some things in life that the males rated higher than the females. They include having lots of money; inventing or creating something; having a full-time career; and being successful in one's line of work. It's worth noting that studies of highly successful people find that single-mindedness and competitiveness are recurring traits in geniuses (of both sexes).; 7/10/06, 12:12 PM
Palladian said...: Love the vlog!; 7/10/06, 2:11 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Love the vlog also!

Much better than podcasting. Great stuff!; 7/10/06, 2:14 PM
reader_iam said...: Cool! But please don't stop podcasting ... I couldn't walk, or fold laundry, or drive around, or sit at the playground, and watch the vlog!

Eh, how selfish of me, I know.

I know!--how about you devote your entire life to blogging, vlogging and podcasting, meeting our needs in every medium?!

Probably not, huh?; 7/10/06, 2:25 PM
Ann Althouse said...: There's also video podcasting...

Well, I really like doing the little movie clip. Now that I've figured it out, I'm going to use it for variety here. It might be faster than some updates, and it's pretty amusing.; 7/10/06, 2:31 PM
High Desert Wanderer said...: Align left: I don't know how much of this you have control of., but your defined "Object" width is 425 while your defined "Embed" width is 600. If you make you embed width 425 as well, you'll be able to align as you choose, left or otherwise.; 7/10/06, 2:55 PM
Jennifer said...: Love it too! You have an expressive face that is great for this medium.

And, I love the blue glasses.; 7/10/06, 2:56 PM
Editor Theorist said...: There seems, perhaps, to be an assumption behind AA's comments that the default position is that men and women intrinsically think and behave the same - and that therefore differentials in career choice and aptitude are most likely to be due to 'cultural' (ie. non-biological) factors.

If this is indeed AA's assumption, I believe it goes against the scientific evidence (this is my field). Biologically, men and women are psychologically different - this is not really a matter for scientific debate - it is the case for virtually all male and female animals. What is at issue is whether the psychological differences are significant, and how big they are, in any specific situation.

For example: The scholarly work of Kingsley Browne, a law Professor at Wayne State University, has plausibly documented the major biological contribution to men-women differences at work in relation to matters such as average salaries, promotion levels, sexual harrassment, combat military careers and many other issues.

http://www.law.wayne.edu/faculty/
profiles/browne_kingsley.html

But my guess is that (rather than being a matter of IQ) the men-women differential in supreme court clerks probably has the same general cause as the differences for all high status jobs that require single-minded committment. For well-established evolutionary reasons, men (on average) value status more than women do, and are prepared to make greater sacrifices to attain it.; 7/10/06, 3:23 PM
Paddy O said...: Seems to me that the better explanation is that Supreme Court justices, with all the power and freedom they have, can be as chauvinistic as they want to be.

Or maybe it's their wives. They don't want young, ambitious women law clerks working for their husbands.

Or maybe it's a generational thing. It hasn't been so long since there has been an equality of women graduating from law schools.

Or, maybe women make better lawyers and have so much success in the courtroom they don't want to be clerks.

Maybe women have an predisposition to dislike the weather in Washington DC more.

Maybe men have a stronger tendency to brown nose, and feel they have to perform on their resume to make up for their natural lack of talent.

Maybe there is a special code imbedded in the Constitution told only to Supreme Court justices that has been passed on for 200 years which guides these sorts of things.

I think it's more fun to keep speculating rather than stop speculating. Speculation opens up the possibility of a lot of fun, especially when the sure fire response is to demand a study saying why the speculation is wrong.; 7/10/06, 5:15 PM
Mariam said...: Awesome! All I could think was "Snap! Go Ann!"

I have often thought about the disparity in the legal profession between the sexes. More specifically, why men seem to dominate the higher level firm positions, clerk positions, etc. I think the difference is much more societal than biological. But not exclusively so. Biologically, women bear children. Socially speaking, traditionally women are also the ones who take time off to care for the children. And that's only one factor that could contribute men being the predominant ones in those positions. Maybe the predominantly male Court simply prefers male clerks? Who knows!

I think your reference to the biological contributions of race as compared to sex in intelligence differences is the most germaine. Ultimately, the lesson learned is you can't make gross generalizations without scientific substantiation.; 7/10/06, 6:05 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Art: Actually, no.; 7/10/06, 10:47 PM
Hazy Dave said...: Perhaps a lack of social graces and empathy for other humans is a positive attribute in law clerks? Just a thought.

I'm surprised that the presumption that superior intelligence is a prerequisite for success in any particular endeavor seems to be so widespread among people who should know better. Do "successful" people see their success as proof of their intelligence? Do "intelligent" people consider "success" to be their due?; 7/11/06, 11:05 AM
dbp said...: The collection of individuals is so small and so minimally skewed toward the male that it's a terrible basis for making generalizations about the sexes! Hey, I'm a girl, but I can still see that's damned unscientific. If we're going to just speculate, well, how about not doing it?

Hi Ann,

It took me a while to post this since I had to dust off (literally) my old stats book and relearn how to use some complex functions on Excel. What I have calculated is that the probability of 11 or fewer women and 27 or more
men being clerks is just less than 0.7 %. This strikes me as highly unlikey to be due to random chance. In fact this is roughly one Standard Deviation more than is required in scientific journals.

My point, and I do have one, is that there is a some cause (other than random chance) for this disparity in numbers. If one is to speculate about the causes, I see no reason from a scientific standpoint, to hold biological reasons to a higher standard than other reasons.

dbp; 7/11/06, 7:08 PM
Anonymous said...: Nice response! I think she is looking for Tuxedos it is?; 7/4/11, 3:04 AM