Conference quark::mennotes

"The sexes are different because their brains are different.  The brain, the 
chief administrative and emotional organ of life, is differently constructed in 
men and women; it processes information in a different way, which results in 
different perceptions, priorities and behaviour.

"In the past ten years there has been an explosion of scientific research into 
what makes the sexes different.  Doctors, scientists, psychologists and 
sociologists, working apart, have produced a body of findings which, taken 
together, paints a remarkably consistent picture.  And the picture is one of 
startling sexual asymmetry.

"Until recently, behavioural differences between the sexes have been explained 
away by social conditioning...  Today there is too much new biological evidence 
for the sociological argument to prevail.

"[Yet] the truth is that every professional scientist and researcher into the 
subject has concluded that the brains of men and women are different.  There 
has seldom been a greater divide between what intelligent, enlightened opinion 
presumes - that men and women have the same brain - and what science knows - 
that they do not.

"If there is still a dispute about how sex differences arise there is now no 
argument in the scientific community that such differences exist.  It cannot be 
stressed often enough that this book concerns itself with the *average* man and 
the *average* woman.  In the same way, we might say that men are taller than 
women... Of course some women will be taller than some men, and the tallest 
women may possibly be taller than the tallest man.  But statistically men are 
on average 7 per cent taller, and the tallest person in the world... is 
certainly a man.

"These [sex] differences have a practical, social relevance.  On measurements 
of various aptitude tests, the difference between the sexes in average scores 
on these tests can be as much as 25 per cent.  A difference of as little as 5 
per cent has been found to have a marked impact on the occupations or 
activities at which men and women will, on average, excel.
    
"While the male brain gives men the edge in dealing with things and theorems, 
the female brain is organised to respond more sensitively to all sensory 
stimuli.  Women do better than men on tests of verbal ability.  Females are 
equipped to receive a wider range of sensory information, to connect and relate 
that information with greater facility, to place a primacy on personal 
relationships, and to communicate.  Cultural influences may reinforce these 
strengths, but they are innate.

"Girls say their first words and learn to speak... earlier than boys.   They 
read earlier too... Boys outnumber girls 4:1 in remedial reading classes.  They 
[women] are also more fluent: stuttering and other speech defects occur almost 
exclusively among boys.

"Girls and women hear better than men.  When the sexes are compared, women show 
a greater sensitivity to sound.

"Men and women even see some things differently.  Women see better in the dark. 
They are more sensitive to the red end of the spectrum, and have a better 
visual memory.

"Men see better than women in bright light.  Intriguing results also show that 
men tend to be literally blinkered; they see in a narrow field - mild tunnel 
vision - with greater concentration on depth... Women, however, quite literally 
take in the bigger picture.  They have wider peripheral vision, because they 
have more of the receptor cones and rods in the retina, at the back of the 
eyeball, to receive a wider arc of visual input.

"There is strong evidence that men and women have different senses of taste - 
women being more sensitive to bitter flavours like quinine, and preferring 
higher concentrations and greater quantities of sweet things.  Men score higher 
in discerning salty flavours.  Overall, however, the evidence strongly suggests 
a greater female delicacy and perception in taste.

"Women's noses, as well as their palates, are more sensitive than men's; a case 
in point is their perception of exaltolide, a synthetic musk-like odour 
associated with men, but hardly noticeable to them.  Women found the smell 
attractive.  Interestingly, this superior sensitivity increases just before 
ovulation; at a critical time of her menstrual cycle, the biology of women 
makes her more sensitive to man.

"This superiority in so many of the senses can be clinically measured - yet it 
is what accounts for women's almost supernatural 'intuition'.  Women are simply 
better equipped to notice things to which men are comparatively blind and 
deaf... Women are better at picking up social cues, picking up important 
nuances of meaning from tones of voice or intensity of expression."
    
From 'Brain Sex', by Anne Moir, PH.D. (Genetics) and David Jessel, writer.

    I think that both men and women have intuition. It may or may not be
    different. I suspect that we hear more about women's intuition because
    many men and women are afraid to admit that women are smart. So
    writing something off to "intuition" allows people to not face the
    fact that women are capable of rational thought.

    On the other hand most men would rather deny that they come up with
    things without rational thought and so prefer to to avoid using the
    word intuition for their own processes.

    Besides that, women are magic anyway so intuition seems more believable
    in women in the first place. :-)

    		Alfred

    Men intuit things, as do women - not necessarily in the same way or
    under the same circumstances, but we do both have intuition.  But the
    stereotypical self-image for men is one of cold reason.  I think we'd
    rather not acknowledge intuition.  So we call it hunches instead.
    
    -dick

Men possess an intuitive power too but we call it anticipation.    

In England during the time of the great 'witch hunts' many women were drowned
or burnt at the stake for being intuitive. Intuition was thought of (probably
still is) as a kind of 'sixth sense' with it's roots in the occult. Antici-
pation is far more respectable !!!

Re. -1

	"many men and women are afraid to admit that women are smart."

I don't believe that any women are afraid of admitting this and these days
very few men would even think it. Alfred, in your next paragraph I think you 
confused rational with logical ? I beg you, please tell me I'm right ....

- Paul.

>	"many men and women are afraid to admit that women are smart."
>
>I don't believe that any women are afraid of admitting this and these days
>very few men would even think it. 

    I think there are still quite a few women who hide their intelligence. 
    And more still the men who really don't want to admit that women are
    smart. It's not as bad as say 20 years ago but it still exists. And the
    stereotypes about women's intuition really date from earlier times.

    >Alfred, in your next paragraph I think you 
>confused rational with logical ? I beg you, please tell me I'm right ....

    You're right. Cut and paste error.

    		Alfred

    re .5
    
    How do you reconcile your statement about 'stereotypes' with the
    clinical evidence referred to in the analysis in .1?

>    How do you reconcile your statement about 'stereotypes' with the
>    clinical evidence referred to in the analysis in .1?

    I don't see a conflict. I've always believed that women and men had
    different methods and thought processes. Different doesn't imply
    better or worse though. At least not to me.

    The stereotypes I refer to are the ones that say that men aren't
    interested in smart woman so "woman should hide their smarts". Or that
    they should camouflage it in some non threatening way. I don't see what
    is in .1 relating to that very much. The idea that intuition may
    actually exist doesn't negate the fact that woman are smart. Nor does
    it rule out men being threatened by smart women. You can hide behind
    real things as well as "fake" things.

    Of course .1 does attempt to explain women's intuition as being the
    result of women being better processors of sensual stimulation. That
    may be right but I don't see that it rules out male intuition based on
    the different ways men process information. I know that my son and I
    often come to correct results similar to those my wife does but through
    very different paths. We each "see" things the other misses and follow
    logic paths that seem totally different (if not completely illogical)
    to the other.

    There is a saying that any significant technology is indistinguishable
    from magic to those who don't understand it. I'd like to suggest that
    intuition is what we generally use to explain a subconscious thought
    process that is either not understood or significantly different from
    what we would use (or think we'd use) that we can't easily explain it.

    		Alfred

    .about men not interested in smart women.

    that is not true offcourse, what may be happens is that a smart
    woman will have a better position than a non-smart one (just like
    with men too), and a woman with better position in life seem to have
    her nose up too much, and that seems to turn men off from them, so
    they turn to women who are as smart and more modest in turn.

    success seems to change women to something else, they seem to become 
    more like men. this is just my analysis of it.

    about intuition, i think intuition can mislead more than lead you to the
    correct conclusion. i'd rather make my decisions based on calculations
    and analyses than some hunch bunch or something i heard in the friendly
    si'kick hot lines or because my dog parked too much that day.

    hope this helps.

    \bye
    \nasser

    
     What often passes as womens intuition is nothing more than mans
    transparancy.
    
    

    I would say that most creative work is intuitive, once a certain
    rational form has been fulfilled. Creative is moving beyond the known.
    
    It is probably the most valuble forum for learning something new.
    
    

    .-1

    i think it is imagination, not intuition.

    i think it was Einstine who said that imagination is more
    important than knowledge.  and i agree with him :)

    hope this helps.

    \bye
    \nasser

    re:.0
    
    I think this is tied to the fact(?) that women are more likely to 
    believe in the paranormal : tarot cards, crystals, ouija boards, palm-
    reading, etc.
    
    Hence, they are likely to place more trust in intuition than men.
    
    Is women's intuition accurate?  If Jean Dixon is any indicator, no.

    .8  ......success seems to change women, they become more like men.
    
    I have noticed that too.  I assume you mean career/business type
    success?
    
    It may be that the charactersitics which go toward successful careers
    (assertativeness, snappy dress, business oriented) we ASSOCIATE with
    men because historically this is what men did. It maybe that the
    characteristics of the job describe the individual more than the
    gender of the person.
    
    But, I do know what you mean... it does seem to change women to be
    what I would call more mannish.
    
    Jeff

                    Study finds evidence of ESP phenomenon
                      By David L. Chandler, Globe staff
         from "AAAS in Boston," in the Boston Globe, 15 February 1993

A psychologist from Cornell University reported yesterday what he said was the
best evidence yet for the existence of a form of ESP, or extrasensory
perception, gathered from a detailed new analysis of 39 studies that were done
in the 1970s and 1980s.

While a person in one room stared at a picture or video clips of anything from
a Bugs Bunny cartoon to a crashing tidal wave, another person in a room
isolated from the first described whatever popped into his or her mind. Far
more often than could be explained by chance, the "receiver" described images
very similar to what the "sender" was watching, said psychologist Daryl J. Bem
of Cornell University, who was a coauthor of the study.

Surveys have shown that most people believe in the likelihood of some ESP
phenomena -- such as telepathy, or reading the thoughts of another person;
clairvoyance, or "seeing" something in a distant place; or precognition, which
is knowing something before it happens -- are real. Even among natural
scientists, one survey showed 55 percent think the reality of some ESP
experiences is established or likely. But among psychologists, only 34 percent
think so, and research on the subject is almost never reported in mainstream
psychological journals.

In an unusual departure from that trend, the analysis of the experiments has
been accepted for publication by the American Psychological Bulletin, which
Robert Rosenthal, chairman of the psychology department at Harvard University,
describes as "the most prestigious journal in psychology."

Results of earlier experiments that claimed to show evidence for ESP have often
been only slightly above the level of chance, but in the latest analysis "the
probability that the results could have occurred by chance is less than 1 in a
billion," says Bem, who presented the results in Boston at the annual meeting of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Bem, a coauthor of the
study with Charles Honorton, who was a parapsychologist at the University of
Edinburgh [sic]. Honorton died last November.

Rosenthal said in an interview he was "quite persuaded" by Bem's results. He
had been "an agnostic" about the existence of ESP, he said, but "the
statistical evidence [in Bem's analysis] is quite clear to me that there is a
phenomenon there that does require explaining."

In the experiments Bem studied, a sender in one room focused on a photograph,
art reproduction, or video segment that had been randomly selected by a
computer, while a receiver sat in another room with his eyes covered with
Ping-Pong ball halves and earphones blocking any sounds with a steady "white
noise." The receiver then described his or her mental impressions during the
time the sender was viewing the image.

The setup was designed to isolate the receiver from any ordinary sights,
sounds, or sensations on the theory that ESP impressions may be so faint that
they are easily swamped by the ordinary sights and sounds. Also, the images
used for the experiment were chosen to be more interesting than the simple
geometrical symbols often used in many earlier ESP experiments. Subjects often
became bored and did not do well.

Later, the receiver was shown four or more different images, including the one
the sender had been looking at and asked to pick the one that most clearly
matched what they experienced during the test period. With four choices, the
subject had a 25 percent chance of choosing the correct one.

"Strong Evidence"

But  in a total of 330 tests, the overall "hit" rate was 32 percent -- "the
largest effect we know of," Bem said -- in any experiment on ESP.

It is a rate that Donald B. Rubin, chairman of the department of statistics at
Harvard, said yesterday would provide "strong evidence that the effect is
real," assuming that the experimental procedures were valid.

Two psychologists performed independent reviews in 1985 of a similar set of
experiments, to assess any possible flaws in the methods used. They concluded
at the time that the statistical effect in those tests was overwhelming, but
disagreed on the possibility of flaws in the procedures. They then jointly
signed a statement suggesting how the procedures could be tightened to make the
results clearly valid.

One of those researchers was Honorton, who went on to set up experiments
specifically designed to overcome every criticism that had been leveled at the
earlier experiments. Bem, who performs magic acts in his spare time, was
brought in to check the procedures to guard against any possibility of fraud or
inadvertent communication. Magicians are often used to check experiments in ESP
as a safeguard against trickery.

Creative edge noted

In the most recent experiments, Bem also found evidence to support the widely
held belief that creative people are more receptive to ESP. Twenty students
from the Juilliard School of Music participated in the experiment, and their
results were even more striking than those of other subjects. Compared to the
25 percent chance rate, the students scored 50 percent. And the musicians in
that group did even better -- a 75 percent hit rate.

Ray Hyman, a psychologist at the university of Oregon who wrote the critical
review of these experiments in 1985, remains skeptical, Bem said. But
Rosenthal, who was called in by a professional journal to referee the debate
between Hyman and Honorton in 1985, said "the numbers are so clear now that
it's really incumbent on the critics to try to explain these and make them go
away."

Rosenthal said that one of the things that makes the new study especially
credible is that Bem "is one of the true agnostics in the field, who came to it
without preconceived ideas" of whether the phenomenon was real. "He had the
right background," Rosenthal said.

Bem said the safeguards used in the recent experiments as a result of the 1985
critique "rule out, for me, all other reasonable nonpsi explanations that have
been suggested." Psi is another term for ESP phenomena. Bem is conducting
another set of such experiments to add to the body of evidence on the subject.

The latest results are clear enough, Rosenthal said, that "I think it'll make
it a little more socially acceptable to do such research."

    The Amazing Randi offers $20,000 cash, on the spot, to anyone who can
    demonstrate for him any one of the paranormal powers, like clairvoyance
    or telekenesis.
    
    He also debunks frauds who claim to have paranormal powers.  He's an
    ex-magician who can easily spot the tricks they employ.

    i want to go talk to this Randi dude, i bet you when i do one of
    si'kick readings to him, he'll pay me my 20,000 bucks with no 
    arguing around about it.
    
    \bye
    \nasser

    RE: .15  Mike Z.
    
    > The Amazing Randi offers $20,000 cash, on the spot, to anyone who can
    > demonstrate for him any one of the paranormal powers, like clairvoyance
    > or telekenesis.
    
    He should send his $20,000 to the researchers mentioned in the article
    I posted (if the results of the described experiments can be consistently
    reproduced by others in a sound scientific environment.)
    
    The results of their experiments seem to suggest that they found
    something beyond the level of chance:
    
       "Results of earlier experiments that claimed to show evidence for ESP 
       have often been only slightly above the level of chance, but in the 
       latest analysis "the probability that the results could have occurred 
       by chance is less than 1 in a billion," says Bem, who presented the 
       results in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association 
       for the Advancement of Science. Bem, a coauthor of the study with 
       Charles Honorton, who was a parapsychologist at the University of
       Edinburgh [sic].  Honorton died last November."

    By the way, I don't believe in professional psychics at all
    (especially the ones who predict future news stories.)
    
    *IFF* scientific experiments can be conducted (with the results
    reproduced by scientists, other than parapsychologists) which
    prove that some level of ESP may exist in humans, I'd be very
    interested in hearing details of these studies.
    
    The article I posted makes it sound as though such studies are
    beginning (based on the results of some experiments.)  I hope
    that some followup verification is done on these experiments.

    In the mythological story of Pandora's Box, the only plague that was
    kept in the box was the ability to know the future.  And if, according
    to the story, that "demon" had escaped it would have meant the end
    of mankind.  Because knowing the future, you would know all of the 
    bad as well as the good, and, according to the story, mankind would
    not have been able to handle knowing all the c**p that is to come.
    Most people who go to "psychics" do so looking to find out that 
    something _good_ is going to happen. 

    My wife, in her younger days, went to see a palm reader with three
    of her friends.  The reader gave the first three the standard
    b.s, but when she looked at the fourth, the readers face went white
    and she muttered something about she just couldn't continue and
    ended the session.  Four days later the girl was hit by a car while 
    crossing the street and killed.
    
    fred();

.17> He should send his $20,000 to the researchers mentioned in the article
    
    Gee, the systren flip their wigs when a man tells a woman what she
    should do...

    Well, unless Amazing Randi is here, no one's told him what to do.  :>
    
    If he's willing to pay $20,000 for proof of ESP, then he could *check
    out* the research being done to see if it fits the bill.
    
    It does kinda sound like he's looking for an individual to come along
    with personal claims of ESP, though, so he can debunk them.  If so,
    that's ok, too.
    
    I'm still more interested in the scientific approach, myself.

    I have never understood that if there really are people with ESP why we
    don't hear more cases of them winning the lottery or being tremendously
    successful on the stock market?????  ;->  I would think if someone
    really had such powers they would use it to their advantage (financial
    or other).   
      
    /Kim 

because lottery isn't detectable with ESP.  ESP detects what someone is
*thinking*.  No one is *thinking* the number that will actually win.  So no
one with ESP can detect the winning number.


Now, if we play a similar game, where I *know* a winning number, and whichever
of you guesses the number wins some money from me, then an ESP person might
be able to announce the winning number.

Can you understand the difference of this game and the lottery ?

/Eric

Well, Kim, if I had such powers and I used them to my advantage.  I darned
sure wouldn't advertise the fact.  If I could do an incredible amount of 
good with these powers, I still wouldn't advertise.  With only one of me
and billions of poeple in the world who might want something, I'd be as
quiet as a churchmouse.  Nope, if there are some people with specific, strong
powers, I doubt you'd ever know it.

80)

esp is perception by extrasensory or other extraordinary means. 

I believe this would include not only mind-reading but also precognition,
other forms of telepathy, telekinesis, and a whole host of other 
extrasensory and extraordinary talents or abilities.

re time travel - I am still having difficulties with fast forward and reverse
though.  ;->

    BTW, the studies currently in the news are by no means the first to
    show results "significantly better than chance".  Previous studies
    which appeared to show better-than-chance results were found to
    be flawed.  Only time and investigation will tell if this latest
    study is to be another "Cold Fusion".
    
    				Steve

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Note 543.107                        Psychics                          107 of 154
HDLITE::ZARLENGA "Michael Zarlenga, Alpha P/PEG"     23 lines  15-FEB-1993 20:04
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.106> Today's Globe did a report on ESP (Study finds evidence of ESP
.106> phenomenon).
    
    Remember the great "homeopathy works" study about 4 years ago?  First
    one to ever show the effect of a substance after the sample was diluted
    so much that there was "no chance" that the original substance could be
    found in the sample.
    
    Turned out to be a poorly controlled study.
    
    In this case, the same can be true.  Some things caught my eye :
    	1. They used "more interesting" photographs, not geometric shapes.
    	2. It wasn't mentioned if the computer's selection algorithm or	   
            selection history during the study was tested for randomness.
    
    Why are they important?  Groups of people are more or less likely to
    imagine one photographic scene or image than another.  How likely would
    it be for a construction worker to imagine a portrait of Shakespeare? 
    How likely for a student in performing arts school?
    
    What results would you expect if the computer happened to select the
    Shakespeare image more than 25% of the time when testing students in a
    performing arts school?