Not trying to be a jerk but. Are women worse at chess than men?

I would just like to point out that I have never posted on a thread of this subject matter at any point in my life. I am a complete newcomer to this type of discussion.

Ok, with that out of the way, I'm just kind of curious about how people who like to almost solely explain the disparity between men's and women's chess with statistics think. So for example, saying that it's all explained by women not being interested in chess and not being encouraged to play. What do you think about the connection between interest and ability? Is it just really dumb to suggest that being interested in something is a sign of having talent in that area? Or is it something you think could mean that but it's overly speculative? Are you open to there being a connection between interest and talent, or is it out of the question, or is it somewhere in between?

It just seems like a pretty intuitive idea that if you are interested in something and passionate about it, it's because you are comfortable with it, learning about it seems to flow more easily than usual, your mind is more able to cope with the nuances of it. That seems pretty similar to having a talent for that thing (or more speculatively, that specific type of thing). And it seems like certain pursuits tend to correlate. Like, it seems like people who like chess, also tend to have some interest in poker, or go, and again it seems natural that the reason for that would be that there are some common kinds of features of those things that attract people who are comfortable with those features to those pursuits.

Sure, just because something seems plausible doesn't mean it actually is, but it does give me reasons to go with that side. It's just that this kind of basic stuff that is easy to notice usually only starts to bring doubt if we are demanding scientific proof for it. It's just one of those things that's sort of all around you but doesn't lend itself to narrow scientific proofs. For example, probably everyone agrees that men and women tend to act differently, in that, your experiences in interacting with men are noticeably different from your experiences in interacting with women (e.g., different mannerisms, preferred topics of conversation, different emotions being expressed at different points of the conversation). Yet... how exactly do you scientifically prove that men and women act differently? It's such a broad topic that it might not be easy to do, it's just something you feel on intuition, very strongly. Yet, I don't think this makes people seriously doubt that men and women act differently. Just speak with a man or a woman, and you'll notice differences instantly. Explaining in neat terms how you can know they act differently is like Carlsen trying to explain his intuition.

I just wanted to give examples of what I mean. I'm not sure where I stand on what instincts we should trust, which ones we shouldn't (well, I am quite convinced that men and women act differently). But, I don't think that intuition has to be a bad way of coming to conclusions when it is giving signs that are so ubiquitous they get ingrained into us. Some of the truest things like Carlsen's intuition can't be rigorously broken down, yet, we can strongly appreciate their value. In the debate of women and chess, of course social factors should be discussed, and we should always have healthy scepticism of our instincts, but there is also a ton of potential value to our instincts. I mean, with scepticism you can question obvious things like whether you even exist or not, or if you're just an illusion, but as you could imagine, you risk being wrong about some of the easiest questions out there when you take scepticism to extremes.

One might wonder if the fact that the groups of male and female chess players are self-selected is significant. If you just picked dozens of random people (preferably those who have never or almost never played ) to study chess for a few hours, what would happen? Would there be noticeable differences between the sexes? I don't know, but I have a feeling that I would detect more differences if I was observing a randomly picked male player (newcomer)  and randomly picked female player (newcomer) than if I were observing a self-selected male player and a self-selected female player. I think that in the latter case, there wouldn't necessarily be much of a difference, because you are picking from a sample of people who presumably already are attracted to the game of chess. It's like if you compared a 2600 female to a 2600 male: they will be similar (in skill but also perhaps in certain mental traits) because your sample is so restricted. But, you can show just about anything with a really restricted sample, so I think it can start to look like meaningless cherry-picking if you don't use stats carefully. I suppose that it would make a potentially big difference if you picked a little girl and little boy than if you picked a man and a woman for the experiment, complexities to these issues are all around, but I just wanted to remind us that we often look at self-selected groups and how that can affect our reasoning.

Just some concerns and thoughts about these issues, I guess.

That looked a lot shorter typing in the little comments box they give you than when it posted. I did not intend to write that much, but I guess that didn't stop me at all from writing that much. Sorry. Not bad for someone who has never touched this topic before, right?

I have seen people literally say that the difference is entirely statistics And mind you, oftentimes from people I consider to be pretty intelligent and reasonable!

Well, women and chess threads always invite trolls. I'm not sure their appearance obligates anyone who wanted to seriously discuss the issue to not do so. I am genuinely curious about what people think, here. I actually do want to be constructive. There might be very decent reasons why people really do not want to connect interest to talent, and I would be interested to hear their take. If they want to talk about it, of course.

For a thousand years he has lain, dormant.

But now he walks the surface of the earth once more.

To post in unsuspecting topics about women chess players.

His name is Elubas.

His text is enormous.

His stream of consciousness only loosely tied to the topic at hand.

The bones of full fifty men lay scatter across his textual wasteland.

So brave readers if you do doubt your courage or your strength... come no further.

That doesn't make any sense, what do you mean?

I guess you mean that the differences can be fully explained through statistics?

It seems hard for something to explain a difference without also indicating it, or vice versa. So I'm not sure of what point you are using that distinction to make.

Elubas is nothing if not comprehensive

But seriously, he's a thoughtful guy, I'm just having a little fun.

I might try to dig through is post... actually I have already, but it's a bit confusing what he means at times.

For example the first two paragraphs I get the impression he was saying there's a positive feedback loop. If you're interested in something, you gain skill, which makes you like it more, and so practice it more, etc.

But I'm not sure because there (seem) to be a lot of extra words so it takes some digging and re reading.

Ask the people who say that

I agree that it's a strange thing to say, taken totally literally. But people say it. Perhaps they themselves don't know what they mean when they say it, but that's kind of my point. You have to look at the people that make up statistics, not just statistics themselves. So for example my point about self-selected versus random samples gets into that a bit.

Lets stop there for now. First of all talent is a tricky word that means different things to different people, so lets leave that alone (some say it means skill, some say potential to gain skill, among other things).

I agree that the difference isn't fully explained through participation rates. Even the statisticians say that only accounts for most of what we see. It could also be that women aren't as interested to begin with. I think that's an interesting angle.

women generally have different interests than men and are typically less competitive at games.

Yeah, I'm not saying you can't have one and not the other, just that it's hard not to. For example, if I say I explained to Mike that I did x, I also indicated to him that I did x. That's how I often think of these terms, anyway. I could be using the terms wrong on a strict level, but I still am wondering, as I asked, what point specifically you are using the distinction to make.

Sort of like the people who want to separate Fischer from his madness and ask what if he'd played Karpov... but to do that would make him less good at chess, because he wouldn't have had the obsession. The madness was part of the man, part of the skill.

Just like with a female chess player, her likes and dislikes are part of the equation, so a truly random sample may not be ideal, I see what you're saying.

Well there's a difference between individuals and groups.

Individuals can be wildly different, and unpredictable, but groups (as a whole) tend to be more uniform and predictable. That's where statistics come in handy.

I think we intuitively know it's true that the differences between individuals is greater than the differences between the genders in general (as I said so many years ago in one of these topics). But that doesn't mean statistics, and groups, are bad at answering the question whether, and how much, men and women are different... because it's implied in the question itself we're talking about groups.

Yeah I mean, just think of my post as a number of different points that I thought were interesting to discuss, but not necessarily connected into a succinct whole The points are loosely connected, but not especially well. But the points individually are all worth discussing (to me, anyway), and, just wanted to talk about them, throw them out there. I know that people will want to only look at some of the points, but that's fine, people can skip what they want and I can write what I want

#101 and #108 above take a bite sized stab at a few of your thoughts.

It's almost a pity to see you leave so soon... not that I'm willing to sit and chat for hours.

"Your claim that people have explained the difference between men and women in chess by statistics is not admissible because it doesn't make sense."

Sure it makes sense. I have seen people say things like "The difference between men and women is just a matter of statistics." That's literally all I was saying. I was talking about claims I have seen people make. I didn't say I agreed with them.

"This is a matter of substance and not semantics."

Yet, you put a very strong focus on the semantics of the words "explain" and "indicate," despite having very little to do with the points being discussed as a whole. So, I'm not sure how much you believe that statement.

Oh my, TheTaleOfWob. You definitely make these discussions less enjoyable. Not sure what you get out of that? But, of course, it's a public forum, and people have freedom, so I put up with it, even though I don't approve of your condescending approach. I still like to discuss, and ultimately get enjoyment from being here oftentimes. In fact, that's kind of why I haven't been here in a while I get sucked in too much. It's a lot of fun for some reason, but it can suck time like an addiction. Enjoy being able to bash me straight to my face while you can, is perhaps your logic

Women may be worse than men at chess and other games. But women are getting better than men in important activities like leadership, management, education, etc.

Apparently part of being away means you've lost your sense for trolls. He's just screwing with you. I tried to have some discussion... oh well.

I mean, it's not really emotional to respond to your points Then I guess you're emotional, too, by that logic. But, not much sense in this discussion, perhaps, as I'm not sure how I could prove to you what my emotions are.

But onto the rest of your post: yes, I would very much say that we were discussing semantics when it came to "explain" and "indicate." To show me how one could explain without indicating or vice versa, that all depends on what those words mean and in which situations they apply or don't apply, etc. That's about as semantics-heavy as you can expect a typical conversation to get