Humans evolved from MANY different species of living organisms.  Deep inside humans are the basic primal instincts of MANY different organisms, all the way back to single-celled, microscopic blobs.
I cannot use science to 'prove' anything, because I have made it clear, my stance is based on 'the basics' of what is considered scientific facts.  Also, I base my conclusions on personal experience.

Modern women(overall) are not as confident in their physical ability to destroy another human as men are.  It is just common sense and reality.  
Every Friday night there are fist fights ALL OVER the world, at bars, and such events.  I do not have the scientific data, but I bet that well over 70%-90% of these fights are males.
Males are MUCH more natural at 'confidence in destruction'.  "Confidence in Destruction" could be the name of a(your) chess book.  ha  

Are there up-and-coming female chess players from China? I have an idea that being good at chess often goes with being good at maths and playing an instrument and the Chinese seem to be good at all three. Maybe it's partly to do with education systems and the subjects they prioritize?

I made this image months ago for this thread, honestly I swear I was not trolling, I believe sometimes simplicity is the 'true' key to understanding.  Einstein held a similar belief, he said "..If you can't explain it simply,you don't understand it well enough..."

 

JMurakami wrote:

Arrow and inverted arrow? Really? Is Eisenhower sitting at the White House?

It is definitely barbaric, but as I have been saying, humans are still heavily primal beasts.
I believe man is WAY LESS 'evolved' than we believe ourselves to be.  We create gods, and we see ourselves 'like them'.  We invent technologies, and we compare our 'futuristic' selves to lower intelligences such as domesticated dogs, trained apes, and even insects.  We drive on the highway mindlessly following primal, mammal pack instincts.  We drool over the larger portion at dinner, our teeth bared, a millisecond from snarling wildly.  We 'size up' the opposite sex based on ancient primal instincts that are based around natural selection.
I believe we are nothing more than slightly sophisticated animals, and with that said, I believe chess is an EXCELLENT mirror of our true primitive competitive instincts.

Let's get one thing clear, I am not saying that a woman is not capable of doing anything that a man can, a thing that only requires mental exertion.  Obviously men will make the best boxers, NFL football players etc, etc(at the highest levels of the sports).  But, chess is only played in the mind.

But, I am saying that 'overall' as a collective group, men are just gonna have a more natural emotional behavior-set to build the most powerful chess player on top of.  

My conclusion is majority, I am not covering grey areas, or small examples.

I am not comparing race(or cultural differences), I am comparing the sexes.  Across ALL races my conclusions of the differences in the sexes(in the game of chess) holds firm. 

Buddy, "that" is what we are talking about...

Why are women not as successful as men in chess?

I just have my own way of thinking is all, I guess.  I have made it very clear all of my conclusions are my own idiotic opinions.
But come on man, give me a little credit, my stuff has 'some' weight, ya know.
It seems we have turned this debate of ours more into a chess game, except when you are dealing with opinions, no one can be checkmated.

At the end of the day, if me and you agreed completely, this would be a very boring conversation(if I am not mistaken).

Black people have wider, thicker noses because the human nose cools air, so the African heat left their noses with little to do.  This also explains why more Northern European folks have sharper, pointy noses, because their noses were constantly at work(in the cold).
I am not sure what "such information" has to do with each race's perception of chess though...

I was focused on the topic of the opposite sexes differences in perceiving chess.

After more than a few days when his eye-rolling comment was lost in the abyss of a few pages back, you finally decided to revive it and respond as Mr. Obvious? ^-^

Whether he's simply a brat or naïve, it's adorable. (Don't you remember troll dolls with their little goo-goo eyes and boo-boo cheeks, and then they smile these very cheek-pinching cute grins?)

<3

Internet trolls look more like this..


Trolls leave you with two options, either avoid them completely, or become their catch(wiggling about, hopelessly trying to get out of their net).

Well, that's just the thing, BigKingBud. With you representing him by that image (Spider-legged ship endangering innocent fish around it), you're ultimately giving him that undue power and becoming the fish yourself.

On the other hand, if you treat him like the childish brat that he is (it's cute when an obnoxious disobedient child thinks he's Superman; and when little baby troll dolls act like they're a spider-boat with all these great powers to eat fishiez!!), he's already rendered powerless.

ReincarnateBobby doesn't get to me. The things he says makes him a brat, and I laugh it off. He's not endangerment; here's merely a bug to be squashed.

See how easy that was?

women have more important things to do and tend not to waste so much time on trivial pursuits.

women dont seem to have the need to massage the ego as much as little simple minded men do.

its a plus that women dont play as much chess or the human race would be doomed to test tubes

Sorry, he is trolling you, and you are now being trolled fully.  Dragged behind his BS, and turned and bent into his trap deeper and deeper.  
The only 'way out', is to jump out.  And do not be brought down to his level, less you end up becoming a troll yourself.

Was that just an accident?^

Or was there a deeper purpose behind it?

If no one else has already tapped a moderator on the shoulders, I'll do it tomorrow.

I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about.

Brats are fun at first. Then, you just have to squish them with your fingers soon after.

Also: he can't edit out his posts and get away with it, because I've already archived it at the "WayBack Machine" for evidence.

My advice, love:

If a troll is "in love with you" (following you everywhere), that likely means that you got to him in some earlier conversation; and, holding a childish grudge, he's probably lunkheadedly trying to see how he can annoy you back; just to be stupid.

I say, give him a kiss on the cheek and let him think he won. 

^-^

Of course, since guys still 'homophobically' joke about guy with guy, it only works when you do it. A gal like me.....forget it. We keep our distance for a reason. 

Hey, let him keep thinking that he's getting back at you. It's adorable, isn't it? =D

"Elubas: Oh man, you love walls."

Thanks?

"Earth population is around 7.4 billion. Lets say 50-50, then women should be around 3.7 billion. How many women play Elo–rated chess? 10 thousand? 5 thousand? Even if 50 thousand, would you say they represent 3.7 billion? Not likely."

Well, for one thing, the fact that out of this huge population, many more men play chess than women, yes, that's significant, and certainly because of something. The fact that this came from a population of billions of people doesn't seem to change that at all? If you had a population of 500 trillion men and 500 trillion women, and a highly different percentage of each played chess, surely that's something worth investigating? As said, it can have multiple causes, such as social and biological factors. It's relatively obvious how either factor could, conceivably, cause something like this. There's nothing illogical about that no matter how many people are on the planet.

"But yeah. I was mainly just responding to your statistical points.

Which I wasn't making. Simply put, there's not enough data."

Which is a statistical point. I guess we're defining "statistical point" differently, but I'm sorry if I confused you.

"Are you implying that all the cultures around the world share the same social values?"

Not the exact same social values, no, but there are some big commonalities. Women were almost always looked at as second rate, and had fewer rights than men, in almost all societies.

"What I do think is that social factors make it harder to know if men, as a genre, are better at chess than women, as there are more barriers for women to dedicate their lives to the game."

Isn't that what I said? The barriers won't affect all women, but some women, for sure. That will of course affect the aggregate of female players and thus how it compares to male players.

"For the record, studies have been done suggesting that women play worse when they are told that men play better than women, or some kind of priming like that.

Lets say that's true. What would that prove regarding men and women capabilities to play chess?"

It wouldn't really prove anything as much as it would offer an alternative explanation for the disparity in chess. So, if someone claims that the disparity in chess is only due to female ability, this study will show that it is at least not the only cause of the disparity, if it is a cause at all.

"[...] in general these sorts of studies (among other things) convince me that social factors play a role. However, how much, is quite hard to say.

Social factors may play a role into how many women play chess, not how good they're at chess. You're mixing two concepts as one and the same."

Of course they're not one and the same, but they're likely pretty related to each other. A natural interest in chess will probably correlate with being good at some of the basic things about chess. Sure, everyone's story is different, maybe some woman hates chess at first but then 10 years later discoveres that she's incredibly good at it, but it would be like a conspiracy theory if you acted like this is the usual story.

You could say, only a small percentage of intelligent people would want to dedicate time to chess rather than something, say, more beneficial to society, and that's true. That's why only a small percentage of intelligent men play chess on a high level, or play tournament chess, period. Yet, when you change the gender, you get an even smaller percentage of women playing chess. Again, there are all sorts of theories about all of this, but one involving biology makes some sense. It's just one of many theories, but it's not intellectually bad just because it's not politically correct. It's natural to suggest that different people, with different skills, achieve different results at different things. Maybe that theory will turn out to be wrong, but it's plausible, and corresponds well with what we tend to observe in the world. People who are better at something tend to more often be the person that's doing it.

Note that if someone is biologically better at chess, it does not mean they are more intelligent than someone who is better at some other skill. Or at most, it would mean they have a certain kind of intelligence that is higher. I just wanted to stress that, how intelligence is an imprecise term.

"Then, no, women sure have worst results in chess, but I strongly doubt it has anything to to with DNA disposition because millions of years of successful mutations towards a better male chess player. Simply put, there's no evidence to support that."

There isn't a chess gene, but there are genes for skills that would be especially useful in chess and chess learning. I would think so, anyway.