Nigel Short: Women's brains not chess brains

Do you even know Nigel Short, mate?
Ever seen a commentary, watched an interview, read his tweets?
The guy's messing around all the time, he's joking and always uses excessiveness as a part of his humour.
I love how you ignore the part
"One is not better than the other...",
because that's his actual, genuine opinion.
Everything else is just his show. 

Traditionally women warriors have always been a lot more aggressive and gutsy than males who ,for the most part, always feel the need to observe their buff pecks in reflective surfaces during the heat of battle due to the ego thing. In my opinion women play much more aggressive and exciting chess than men who seem to be playing more and more like computers these days.

Because that's not sexist, like, at all.

Yes, I'm well aware of Nigel Short. I listened to his commentary for a super long chess tournament which I made a thread about. I read about other controversial things throughout his life--the handshake incident and the eulogy column. I watched the Gibralter tournament where Yifan Hou won four masters rated 2700 and ended up playing Nigel Short in a tie-breaker for the title of that tournament. He's smug, arrogant, and I'm not a fan. Anything else? 

Yep, regardless of what he said (says), guaranteed to get some kind of reaction out of people.

Boys and girls really do learn and think differently. This is not controversial. Well, at least it shouldn't be. There are plenty of neurological studies that back this up. (You may be relieved to know that your neurologist can tell the difference next time you have a brain scan.) The differences are small, but critical.

One professional field in which there are almost no women is airline pilot (actually, the figure is about 5%). Flying a commercial jet requires an exacting attention to following a specific order of operations. It's not about intelligence, but male brains tend to deal with that sort of monotonous task better than female brains do. That, and the social life of an airline pilot stinks.

There are plenty of things that females do better than males. And yes, socializing is one of them! Women probably make better politicians than men do!

And yes, there are always going to be exceptional individuals. But Short is right about that part: an exceptional individual doesn't prove the general statement wrong.

Having said that, there are plenty of female GMs (not just WGMs). and women with ratings +2500 FIDE. From a practical perspective, women should be able to break 2800 just as men can. But as Polgar herself admits, it will take more work for a woman than for a man to break that barrier.

It's strange that the equal-sex theory people don't realize how extreme their ideas really are.

Evolution will give species the cognitive mechanism AND incitament system (for instance interest or dislike for war and conflicts) they need to do their thing and perform their normal biological role.

I wonder if they are denying evolution OUTRIGHT and claiming that cognitive ability has no relation to the species role? So on this view it would not be strange to have, say, a salmon equipped with neural mechanism for navigating in the desert. Or that penguins were equally interested in climbing trees and collecting nuts as squirrels? SImply because they deny evolution and biology.

Or do they claim that humans are "special" among animals and for some godly reason the normal rules do not apply to us? That "Normal" species like squirries have the brain they need to do their thing but we don't? And why would humans be the only known exception to evolution and why?

"What Nigel does not realize is that a brain wired to play chess is not a sign of intelligence but more a sign of neurological miswiring with few adaptive applications to real world living."

And I assume that research that proves such a notion wrong means nothing, right?

http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/champion-chess-players-smart-yes-question-65735

Many leading chess players have displayed brilliance outside of chess, showing that chess talent is strongly correlated to other kinds of intelligence. Shall I give you a brief list?

Max Euwe – mathematician, taught computer science at Tilburg University
Emanuel Lasker – mathematician and philosopher
Sergei Movsesian – speaks eight languages
Mikhail Botvinnik – worked as an electrical engineer and computer scientist
Vladimir Malakhov – used to work as a nuclear physicist
John Nunn – was Oxford's youngest undergraduate since 1520
Vladimir Kramnik – when he was 15, he read War and Peace (a novel lasting some 1,400 pages) in two days

"True intelligence involves itself in the issue of solving the problems and suffering inherent with human condition"

And the ultimate manifestation of that "noble" endeavour is trolling on a forum, which you love to engage in, right?

By the way, try improving your reading comprehension, DamnS! Never once in the article did Short say anything about intelligence.

This is no proof at all of anything what so ever. You could generate lists of people using pretyt much anything as the "marker", for instance wearing brown shoes, being short haired or be a smoker and then find some people havin the traits "sucess at intellectual endeavors" and your marker.

Wearing shoes would seem to be more connected to intelligence than chess, since ALL intelligent people wear shoes, whereas, I assume, only a very small percentile of them are good at chess.

Of course it doesn't prove anything. After all, you have a three-digit blitz rating, so you need to tell yourself the comforting fairy tale that there is no connection between chess skill and other types of intelligence.

Your argument regarding shoes is outrageously stupid. There are also many stupid people who wear shoes; moreover, putting on shoes is not considered by any knowledgeable scientist/psychologist/researcher to be a sign of outstanding intelligence. You are too stupid to see how stupid your argument is and you are too stupid to ever become a good chess player. Sucks, doesn't it?

It is noit an agrument, it was an illustration of why your line of reasoning is invalid.In your original argument, you do not look at the combination "stupid + chess" but just assume it isn't there which is a big no-no.

This is why i used "wearing shoes" as an example, since anybody would figure out instantly that many stupid people also wear shoes :)

In your original argument you also have to consider:

Stupid chess playing people. (Fischer doesnt strike me as having managing his general life in a clever way lol.)

Intelligent non-chess playing people. Im sure 99% of the engineer and scientist guys our there VASTLY outnumber your mini-list of people.

Sorry, I disagree.

If Nigel Short says that males and females have different brain structures, that's not controversial, Smyslovfan. It's his sexism which is controversial. 

The reasons why there are really noticeable differences in fields such as piloting and chess is not about neurological differences in the sexes. It is a nurture, not a nature problem. It's the exceptions which inform us of this. It's that 5% or Judit which tells us that this is a social problem.

 I have been playing chess for 14 years and I have a rating about 1600. In order to get that rating I've won many many men since it is male dominated. Males who have played just as long as I have. It always amazes me that some males think that females are somehow not equipped to play a board game because a small amount of males are exceptionally good at it. I'm one of many females who win males all the time in this game. I suppose if a few males were world champion monopoly players we would have to hear the sexists wondering about our brains

You don't know what sexism is, clearly. But I'm sure you're familiar with antipsychotic drugs. You should go take yours.

no doubt men and women are wired differently; and it's not sexist to speculate about differing abilities. But there are gazillions of women who can wipe the board with me and other men. So I don't see how you conclude that women "aren't wired for chess." ??? Illogical Captain.  

that is true; you cannot discuss taboo subjects like that- we must remain ignorant. 

They just don't lol. Exceptions are expected in the class of things belonging to biology, such as human brains male or female, they are not a problem. I think many people think biology works like physics where one exceeption indeed IS a problem, since physicists except all electrons to behave the same. Biology just isnt that way for most things.

Following your line of argument "one single exception disproves something is biologcally typical for male/female" one single bearded woman would disprove that "facial hair growth in humans is a male trait." Or one single three-legged cow should lead us to abandon the idea that cows biology equips them with four legs.

I don't understand why people have no trouble understanding that bearded women or lactating men are exceptions that mean nothing, but then go on to see some other exceptions as being incredily important.

The sexual difference in humans are much smaller than many other species, so it's no surprise that there is overlaps and exceptions. The height difference isn't so big so it's uncommon so see women that are taller than men, as the high end of women's heigth distribution overlap with the low end of men's height distribution. Same with interests.

We don't know it, but I suspct myself that the lack of female chess grandmasters is due to the interest and reward systems more than the raw capabilities.

Trysts, so when Polgar talks about how the physical differences between men and women make it harder for her to compete at the highest level, that's not sexist. Right?

Again, Short and Polgar mostly agree with each other. Short overstated the case, and made headlines. The rest of his comments were not really controversial.

Rasp Yoghurt wrote: I don't understand why people have no trouble understanding that bearded women or lactating men are exceptions that mean nothing, but then go on to see some other exceptions as being incredily important.

Good point.

Here's what Judit said:

"I believe that as I have proved it with my career that with the right amount of work, dedication, talent and love for the game it is possible to compete the best male players in the world of chess even though many of my colleagues were sceptical about my potential. Of course this is not easy as generally a lot of male players say that I was an exception. I do hope that there will be more woman players who will be able to prove it again that women focusing their energy on this goal can play chess at the level of the top male players.

"Men and women are different but there are different ways of thinking and fighting still achieving the same results."

Awww! You poor babies...what are we to do?