Boys Rules, Girls Lose - Women at Work - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2010/08/30/boys-rules-girls-lose-%e2%80%93-women-at-work/ <comment><USER2> I have worked for many male and many female led organizations. Since life is too short, I only work for high achievers who do amazing things. Nevertheless, I have observed that the rules of workplace status differ between the two organizations. Actually, the rules of workplace status differ in every organization as the leader sets the tone. However, since we are generalizing, I wanted to express my thoughts to see what people thought.

Steve Blank describes this as a competition vs collaboration model. I think it's better to take it to the school yard and it's about play fighting vs. social belongingness which are each expensive strategies that require total investment and exclude each other.

Men (let's say) usually play fight to determine the pecking order. Aggression for men is like a status bubble sort: continuously comparing and swapping status with your peers. This strategy consumes energy continuously, but transactionally.

Women (let's say) often mistake play aggression for real aggression and respond inappropriately, thereby losing the game.

Women (let's say) have a different status game. While it's usually described as building relationships, I think that's not quite it play fighters build relationships too. The other game is about constantly demonstrating support of other people around you. This is more like neural networks: reinforce connections or prune them. This strategy also consumes energy continuously, but over time.

Men (let's say) often make a mistake of not responding correctly and come off as insensitive.

 _If we are truthfully generalizing_ , none of this really matters since every leader is different so you'll have to adapt skillfully to your situation. Trust me: gender is not a true signal of which strategy is in play.

Lessons:

1\. Learn how to be acutely aware to your organization's status game and play accordingly.

2\. When you're in power, make sure you create a productive status game and enforce accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER3> I must admit, my experiences are rather the opposite. That is, men seem to collaborate more than women. At least with women I constantly see mobbing behavior, they can get really worked up about having people around they don't like. With men there seems to be more of a laissez faire attitude.

Purely anecdotal, of course...

<comment><USER4> I've observed this as well.

But I think it is not because boys are more collaborative, but because boys are taught not just how to fight, but _when_ to fight. We start fighting when someone yells "fight", but more importantly we stop fighting when the bell rings. Then we hug our opponent and share a beer, because we've got a lot more in common with him than with the people sitting around watching.

I've never observed women being unable to compete - that's just a matter of technical competence. I have observed women being unable to stop competing when the bell rings. Losing is fine, holding a grudge isn't.

(To be fair, some men exhibit the same problem. Academia seems rife with them.)

<comment><USER5> This is about right.

When I've seen my SO in female-dominated workplaces, the constant strain of "collaboration" is exhausting. However, "collaboration" in this sense is usually playing a competitive popularity contest, and in the archetypal case this was achieved by bad mouthing people behind their backs. If you were able to talk to every girl individually, you'd eventually build a picture which painted everyone loathing everyone else. That wasn't true, but that's how they bonded ("You're my favorite in this office, I don't like everyone else" being said to multiple people). In my small sample size (< 4), this seems to be how a lot of female-dominated workplaces are.

I think the difference might be that the bell never rings for females, the popularity game they are playing is constant and exhausting. Men are able to see each individual flash point as an individual battle, and that it's usually a battle of ideologies rather than active dislike. Actively disliking someone is tiring; I can't keep it up for longer than a couple of weeks. The ability for guys to hug the opponent and share a beer is drastically underestimated, in my opinion. We don't often talk about positive traits of males in workplaces, but I think that is definitely one of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's strange. While some boys were undeniably competitive (mostly athletes, where they're expected to be), on the whole, my observations growing up were that girls were viciously competitive, following the maxim "it's a small world, so use your elbows a lot." They were also often cruel to each other, and in any case, keen to establish explicit hierarchies of social popularity and dominance. I am not sure they were in it for authority or power or respect per se - psychological desires often attributed to men - but they were definitely aggressive and competitive.

Most men I knew, meanwhile, easily made friends with each other, were not particularly standoffish, and tended to work together to achieve common goals rather effectively. Sometimes there would be a little bit of healthy competitive dynamic, but almost always within the context of a universally acknowledged, healthy group effort.

<comment><USER7> Completely true. Men and women are equally competitive. The difference is that men compete explicitly and in packs (e.g. team sports) and women compete implicitly and _within_ the group (any Hollywood high-school movie).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think some of the stuff about "hard-wiring" is actually parents underestimating the influence of society vs their own influence. I once read a study that found that eight years old was the point at which children were influenced more by non-family sources than family sources.

<comment><USER9> My daughter was raised similarly to the girls in the article -- we bought gender-neutral toys, painted her room in neutral colors, and deliberately avoided buying any toys that swayed particularly one way or the other.

By the age of three, she had all but insisted that we buy her pink clothes and girlier toys, to which we of course caved (I mean, if she wants it, so be it -- we just weren't trying to influence.)

She's a smart kid, and she's into plenty of non-girl things (She's currently training mixed martial arts at the age of 8, and loves playing in the mud) -- but her school wardrobe almost entirely consists of decidedly non-boy attire, and her field hockey and lacrosse sticks are pink.

We weren't exactly TRYING to steer her away from it, and it was by no means an experiment on our part, we just didn't want to predispose her to girlie things without provocation, so it's in no way scientific -- but we definitely didn't steer her.

<comment><USER10> I have a male cousin who's parents absolutely refused to supply gender specific items. Going so far as to purposely ban toy weapons and other "kinetic and violent" items from the toy chest. By four he was turning anything and everything into a sword or a gun -- legos were assembled into firearms, airplanes were turned upside down and held by the tail as a mock gun, sticks and cardboard tubes were swords and clubs...finally after trying to put the lion back in the cage, at 7 or 8 they finally relented and let him join the rest of the world.

The whole exercise seemed like an utterly pointless endeavor to everybody else...boys will generally find kinetic ways of expressing themselves, girls will generally find non-kinetic but more social ways -- prompting or no prompting.

Most surprising is watching my female cousins and nieces grow up, several of whom were quite physically active (doing more kinetic type play activities, climbing, wrestling, etc.) until 5 or 6 when they all very quickly toned that part of their activity patterns and started upping their social patterns. I think this had to do with their development of more complex speech patterns.

<comment><USER11> How did he know what guns and swords are? There are plenty of outside influences that could pass on societal gender norms even if the parents avoid doing so.

Five or six is when kids typically enter kindergarten in America, where cultural influences from others abound. I don't know what the right explanation is, but I wouldn't discount culture.

<comment><USER12> _How did he know what guns and swords are?_

Excatly. I am very wary of the whole "we were gender neutral with our kids and then the girl wanted a pink dress SO PINK MUST BE HARD-WIRED!" argument. I am pretty sure if we took a human child to a planet where boys wore pastels and girls wore primary colours and that is what the shops had, that is what the characters on TV advertised, that is what the kids in the playground wore - the girl wouldn't turn around and say "You know what someone should invent? A pink dress!".

You only have to look at historical non-western cultures - if you look at some of the African Tribes, men and women dress in bright primary colours. In India, gold, green and red dominate. If you look at historical Japanese kimonos, you see black and red and purple and gold and so on.

So, if pink for girls is cultural, and you didn't promote it to your kids, somebody else did. And they are passing all sorts of other messages too. You can't raise a kid in a box.

<comment><USER13> If you liked, you could look at historical Western culture as well. In the 1800s, both boys and girls wore white, and gender differentiation in clothing style was quite subtle for the first few years of life. Styles only began to diverge around 1900 and the pink / blue dichotomy only became really prevalent after WWII.

That doesn't prove all gender preferences are cultural, but color choice certainly seems to be.

<comment><USER14> I was browsing a book on etiquette published in 1905 a while back and stumbled across an interesting mention that "a parent couldn't go far wrong following the standard conventions and dressing a girl baby in blue and a boy in pink"; it stuck with me and I have been wondering when the conventions changed the other way around. [The quote is from memory and probably not exact, and I can't check it, because I can't remember the book's title.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hm. Growing up, I spent most of my time on collaborative play (building giant lego structures and creating intricate dioramas with action figures), not competitive play (though I certainly liked competitive games, and still do).

I'm not sure that men really spend any more time competing that collaborating, compared to women - is there any evidence to that effect that's not anecdotal?

<comment><USER16> From what my sister (still in highschool) has to say about the girls in her class, girls are ridiculously competitive. Far more than I ever was.

<comment><USER17> On what is their competition based? How is the winner determined?

<comment><USER18> Shoes, clothing, make-up, houses, boobs, boyfriends, husbands... you name it. Women are just as competitive as men.

Something the article did not mention, that I have found to be true. We tend to collaborate with people we trust and fiercely compete with those we do not. Two women may get on fine together (no fierce competition only friendly competition) but two who dislike each other, will not get along and will try to outdo the other... just like guys. So I'm not sure it's 100% gender that determines the situation.

<comment><USER17> So the women in your example compete to see who can _have_ the best boyfriends and husbands and possessions, right? While the men compete to see who can _do_ the best job, run the fastest, hit the hardest, and win the football game or finish the job or beat the other guy at pool.

<comment><USER5> I think this goes back to sunir's post.

Women at the school yard are competing on who is winning the popularity contest, which is like a political campaign. You need to bring together all the money and the tools to win the hearts of the voters. The tools are an enabler, rather than the end-game.

Like you said, men simply need to bring the biggest X, where X is football prowess, muscles, humor, girlfriend. Then the job is done.

<comment><USER19> Bring the biggest girlfriend? That can't be right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Boys rules, Girls lose? Do these theories still hold true? This year, for the first time in the US, the number of women in the workforce surpassed the number of men. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the- end-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of- men/8135/) I don't believe this majority exists in blue collar jobs, but I could be mistaken.

<comment><USER21> That's a good question. But cultures have inertia, so it's likely that even with women forming the majority of the workforce, "masculine" conventions will prevail for a while. This is especially true given that men still tend to hold more positions at the top of the corporate hierarchy.

<comment><USER22> yes i agree with your comment - men are now coasting - that is - they move on inertia - riding the male system designed 2000 years ago - but women have the momentum and therefore they will conquer the workplace within 50 years

i have been researching this topic lately and as i wrote here <http://makebelieve1.wordpress.com/about/> women have kept alive from generation to generation the memory of a society where females were rulers of men

this information comes from the book -when god was a woman- [http://www.amazon.com/When-God-Woman-Merlin- Stone/dp/0156961...](http://www.amazon.com/When-God-Woman-Merlin- Stone/dp/015696158X) especially this quote

in the original female society

–all authority was vested in the woman who discharged every kind of public duty – the men looked after domestic affairs and did as they were told by their wives – men were not allowed to undertake war service or to exercise any functions of government or to fulfill any public office – such as might have given them more spirit to set themselves up against the women – the children were handed over immediately after birth to the men who reared them–

[http://books.google.com/books?id=plkmFjler8cC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=plkmFjler8cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=when+god+was+a+woman&hl=en&ei=-G96TM- aK8P_lgf928XrCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=diodorus&f=false)

<comment><USER20> For the record, this book is pretty controversial. It theorizes about a society that may have existed over 6000 years ago. It references the Amazons - who were mythological - and there is quite a bit of disagreement in the academic community about the validity of the conclusions.

<comment><USER22> \--it references the amazons - who were mythological--

these are the references in the book to amazons - what do you find objectionable in them

[http://books.google.com/books?id=plkmFjler8cC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=plkmFjler8cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=when+god+was+a+woman&hl=en&ei=-G96TM- aK8P_lgf928XrCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=amazon&f=false)

\--there is quite a bit of disagreement in the academic community about the validity of the conclusions--

i read a book for myself and draw my own conclusions - the authority of an -academic community- means nothing to me - if you read the book and wrote your own opinion that would have been a valuable contribution instead of a reference to the authority of something that does not exist namely -academic community-

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here's one tragic result of forced gender assignment:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer>

plus anecdotes from friends and family:

""When I say there was nothing feminine about Brenda," brother Brian Reimer later recalled, "I mean there was nothing feminine:

She walked like a guy. Sat with her legs apart. She talked about guy things, didn't give a crap about cleaning house, getting married, wearing makeup. We both wanted to play with guys, build forts and have snowball fights and play army. She'd get a skipping rope for a gift, and the only thing we'd use that for was to tie people up, whip people with it. She played with my toys: Tinkertoys, dump trucks. This toy sewing machine she got just sat."

<http://www.singlesexschools.org/reimer.html>

</comment><comment><USER24> Anecdote: I've had women bosses in 3 out of the 4 companies I've worked for (not IT shops).

In all cases, IT was a collaboration/support department, subservient to the "men's" departments like sales

And of course the CEO, president or equivalent was a man

However, I think the fact that the #2 person was a woman in all three cases is a win for women.

I wonder if it was subconsciously set up by the leader that way, maybe they feel less threatened by a woman as #2?.

Being in a department that's not in the line of fire hinders the possibility of advancement in the career ladder significantly, I've noticed.

<comment><USER25> I'm in IT and six out of the dozen or so managers I've reported to in my eleven years here have been women. (We're definitely a serious outlier—there was at least one time when my entire five- or six-level management chain was female except for the CEO.)

I haven't seen much direct evidence for the competition-vs.-collaboration model in our organization, but there's one generalization I can make: for whatever reason, on average the women have been far more competent than the men. I've encountered several men up the hierarchy from me who were indifferent, ineffectual or incompetent, but none of the women have been, and the sharpest woman I've worked for could run rings around the sharpest man. I suspect this happens because women have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously in IT. The main difference here seems to be that they can eventually get real career traction.

<comment><USER24> I have to agree that most of the women bosses I've had were much better than the men.

And they do get some career traction, what I wanted to say is that they have some kind of glass ceiling at the CEO / President level.

Since I'm praising them, I guess it's okay to use real names :) . The women bosses that were excellent were:

Matilde Milicevic ( <http://uy.linkedin.com/pub/matilde-milicevic/6/12/905> ), currently chief of operations at Equifax Uruguay

and Noela Próspero, currently chief of operations at Urudata Software

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've read a very good book on the subject, Pink Brain Blue Brain, in which the author writes about what are the really physical differences between genders and which are social differences (basically nature vs. nurture). A good read for anyone trying to understand where science stands as of today on the gender gap questions.

The main theme of the book is, there are differences, but not as dramatic between genders as between two individuals; and much of the differences may be alleviated by paying attention to stereotypes when raising or educating children.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Women can be equally competitive if they desire. It's not a question of competency. Or a skill only boys have. If they want to succeed by competing they can. They just have to learn the rules and practice them."

It is hard to imagine that someone who decides that play fighting with sticks is important for their career will be better at it than someone who has been play fighting with sticks for fun since they were 8 years old and it is misguided to tell that person that does not have the competitive instinct that they can "succeed" in an environment of play fighting enthusiasts.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think the competition vs. collaboration is a little off, but the general point about recognizing the rules of the game is spot on and very important. When you understand the rules you can choose to play, choose not to play, and may in some situations be able to change the rules to suit you better. (When you don't understand the rules and just have a vague sense of being treated unfairly, all you can do is whine, blame, and be miserable)

</comment><comment><USER29> One of the most important take aways is understanding the rules of the game. It's important any time humans organize. A French professor I had in college gave me the sage advice, "Know the rules before you try to break the rules." It's a little out of context to the situation at the time, but still applicable nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think electronic medical records is going to help equal out the amount of women in IT type jobs. At the place I work now medical billing/EMR implementation there are about 40 women and just 3 men.

And yes the women all talk shit about each other constantly, and few get along genuinely.

</comment><comment><USER31> > We started to believe that _perhaps there was some hard-wiring about > gender_.

Uh... gender, perhaps?

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure how Steve was using the term, but "gender" isn't equivalent to "sex" in this sort of discussion.

"Sex" denotes biological differences, while "gender" denotes cultural conventions (which may or may not be directly related to biology).

<comment><USER32> Fallacy of begging the question.

"Gender" denotes the things which are not the physical genital apparatus, and includes but is not limited to types of behavior or preferences or tendencies toward behaviors or preferences. Whether all differences between the sexes in such areas are "cultural conventions" or whether some are in fact "wired in" at a non-cultural level is a topic of endless debate.

<comment><USER21> Indeed. I don't disagree with any of this. Perhaps I didn't phrase it well, but my parenthetical was intended to convey what you said in your comment.

<comment><USER32> You described gender as "cultural conventions". Which sort of assumes an answer to the nature/nurture debate; thus my reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Part IV

To be more clear, is pink hard wired? No. What is hard wired is that she wants to grow to be an adult woman and wants to fit into the group of other girls who want to grow to be adult women. In particular, she wants to fit into the _group_ of other girls who want pretty, pink dresses. And notice, the adult women with the greatest influence on girls 3-4 are the ones who are MOMMIES. E.g., can't expect that a women, who for the past 5-10 years has been working 24 x 7 to be a mommy, would mostly communicate to her daughters that what women should do is to be information technology entrepreneurs. Sorry 'bout that.

Here's a guess: Use standard color graphics software and see how to make a pastel color: Take any _saturated_ color and just mix in a lot of white. Done. So, saturated colors are more _bombastic_ , and pastels are more _sensitive_. So, guess which is more appropriate for a human female?

But, fathers, there's another reason, comparably strong, she wants pretty, pink dresses: One of the A+, astounding talents of little girls is being able to be endearing and to elicit supportive, protective emotions and behavior from their fathers. A girl of 4 can totally outclass her father, wrap him around her little finger. How does she do this? She copies from women and other girls, runs experiments, and sees what gets supportive, protective behavior from her father. Quickly she figures out that being in a pretty pink dress and acting cute, sweet, meek, darling, adorable, precious, dependent, needing to be supported, cared for, and protected, smiling, having her eyes big, looking small by keeping her elbows at her side and her feet together, looking meek by keeping her hands together, being spotlessly clean, etc. gets back an ocean of support, protectiveness, approval, smiles, affection, more pretty, pink dresses, etc. from Daddy. She says, "Daddy, Daddy, will you get me X?". For X a hammer, gun, or toy truck, she sees it doesn't work. For anything pretty and pink, it does work. Age 3; pattern set for life. Mainly she does this work with her astoundingly effective _emotional sensors and processors_ ; always right along she knows what Daddy is feeling and likely thinking about what to do. Fathers: She can read your emotions, ones you never knew you expressed or even had, like a book. If you smile at her, even a little, when she looks a little prettier, and you WILL, then she will look prettier. Bet on it. Mother Nature does.

So, fathers, you've been telling your daughters in terms loud and clear to them that you want them to be cute, sweet, pretty, .... Or, she's nearly never so happy as when she can look cute, sweet, pretty, ..., because she knows that then she can get what she really wants -- supportive and protective behavior from Daddy.

So, fathers, to see why she wants a pretty, pink dress, in part look to your own reactions.

Again, just what is it about motherhood we're having such a tough time understanding?

It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.

Be not deceived: I've only touched on a little of what Mother Nature has, and I omitted the many monsters in Pandora's box. Don't mess around with Mother Nature.

</comment><comment><USER33> Part I

I tried that: it was a super strong effort, didn't work, and was a disaster.

Too much in this thread is "dance 'round and 'round and suppose while the secret sits in the middle, and knows.". Since I've been there, tried that, "Oh he suffered terrible. Got the scars to prove it", I discovered much of the secret and will let you know some of the main points.

So, here's _Girls and Women 101 for Dummies, That Is, Men_. Hackers, listen up. Girls, not just like boys but softer!

Here are three simple explanations:

(1) Just what is it about motherhood people are finding so difficult to understand?

(2) It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.

(3) The strong parts of the tree are from the strong limbs, not the weak, sick, or dead limbs.

I know; I know; now it goes:

"Women, not just for babies anymore.".

Believe much of that, and I've got a great bargain on a bridge over the East River you'd really be interested in.

Warning: The ways Mother Nature has to fight back are intricate, strong, and deep beyond belief, well hidden, and very poorly understood. Why? Sure, now we want women to do _men's work_ for more in _economic productivity_. A woman wants a nice paycheck as a source of financial security; her husband might also like the extra income.

I suggest that essentially just this desire for _economic productivity_ goes WAY back, to whatever men and women did day by day over the past few hundred thousand years at least. The result was nearly always the same and remains so:

Women who did much on _men's work_ were weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree.

Or, for many thousands of years humans have tried to find, and occasionally have found, ways women could do _men's work_ and for each way found Mother Nature quickly pruned out that part of the tree. By now Mother Nature has a huge catalog of well proven, fully effective, long never seriously overcome means to keep women from doing _men's work_. So, now for a woman to be good at _men's work_ , the work essentially must be quite different from anything Mother Nature pruned out over the past few hundred thousand years. Lot's of luck finding such work now!

So just why don't women like real-time, object-oriented, multi-threaded, multi-processing software technology, with a dynamic inheritance hierarchy, active objects, transactional integrity, with an extensible hashing symbol table? Don't ask, but be sure Mother Nature knows!

"But, but, but, she has great grades in school, has a very high IQ, is very determined ...! She's AWASH in ability." Still, for nearly anything in _men's work_ , better bet that Mother Nature long since found a way so that she couldn't do it. Do I have any strong, real world examples? Unfortunately, yes, some VERY strong examples.

Like we said back in Tennessee, "That dog won't hunt.". That's a fact, Jack, and that we don't have a detailed explanation for why doesn't change the fact.

<comment><USER33> Part II

I concluded:

The subject of sex differences is MUCH deeper than we know, so deep that for nearly anything new it as if Mother Nature was there long before we were. If you look like a really good candidate for being a good father and want her to be a good mommy, then likely you have something promising; for anything else very good for her, f'get about it. If she's not a mommy and soccer mom in an SUV, etc., then she can be a nurse, school teacher, HR staffer, customer service representative, retail clerk, pediatrician, OB/GYN, CPA, and a few more. How do we know? Just observe facts. Beginning to understand?

In this case, for that old theme of "The Great Natural Order", take it seriously.

Men: If you see your way clear to striking out in new directions on an adventure to do new things, then by all means go for it. When you get back with your fortune, then by all means sweep her off her feet with flowers, etc, and marry her and make her a mommy (maybe not in this order!), with a nice house with a white picket fence, her own SUV, etc. But if you bring her along on your adventure before you have your fortune, then far too soon she will be terrified and crying in her sleep. Remember the scene in the 1939 'Drums Along the Mohawk' with Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert when as newly married they reached their frontier log cabin, an Indian friend dropped by to pay a visit, and she went all hysterical; movie audiences understood right away, and so should hackers.

Candidate reason: For nearly anything we might try having women do what men now do, long ago there were things sufficiently similar and for those Mother Nature had her way: Mother Nature pruned weak, sick, and dead limbs on the tree. So, for anything we want women to do that is very different from the patterns of strong limbs on the tree, long ago women who did such things just are not our ancestors.

Try hard enough to go against those patterns of strong limbs on the tree, and Mother Nature will open a Pandora's box of monsters. I've seen some of those monsters; you can't win against them; don't open that box; don't go against those patterns; don't try to fool Mother Nature. You can learn this lesson quickly, easily from me now or with great pain as you throw much of your life away later.

I have to insert one crucial point so far omitted: Women are MUCH more emotional than men. So, whenever a man looks at some subject in ways that are rational, if the subject has to do with her own life mostly what will really concern her is what is emotional. Sorry about all that rationality guys: For her own life, her emotions overwhelm. It's not that she has no ability at rationality; she can be brilliant at rationality. It's just that for her own life her emotions overwhelm. The rationality is still there, and for subjects far from her own life can be fully meaningful and effective, but for her own life her emotions can and nearly always will overwhelm.

Chalk up this mechanism to Mother Nature. What fraction of men really understood that Mother Nature could have such a _rationality blocking_ mechanism, that is, have her be brilliant at rationality and carry around that brilliance but in crucial ways not be able to use it? What fraction, guys? Getting an idea of what you are up against, how strong are Mother Nature's defenses?

Or, the Henry Fonda character, with his rationality, that he was comfortable with, saw his way clear to a good life starting with just that log cabin, but for the Claudette Colbert character, for that situation so close to her own life, his rationality was meaningless and her emotions overwhelmed.

<comment><USER33> Part III

One more big, huge point so far omitted here: I want to be short and clear and don't want to be crude, but in simple terms human females are _herd animals_. They are desperate to join groups, mostly of other females, and to be in the center of those groups, receiving approval. Then they feel MUCH more secure. If they can be the leader of such a group, then they can feel even more secure; so, they are _social climbers_. Yes, they are very cooperative within their groups and very competitive outside their groups: One of their main means for both is gossip. As in D. Tannen, gossip, especially expressing emotions, is how they form _group bonds_. Cell phones? Social media? Gossip -- female bonding. Hackers form _bonds_ by sharing work (ever hear of _open source_?); women, sharing emotions!

For little girls and pink dresses, big skirts, puffy sleeves, flimsy and, thus, delicate cloth, pastel colors, tied up with ribbons and bows, a standard explanation is: Children are just desperate for _adult competence_ , that is, want to grow up. Little girls quickly realize that they are little versions of Mommy, and boys, Daddy.

Ever look at pictures of girls and young women, just the faces, without clues to age from hairstyle and makeup, and try to guess the age? Tough to do, ain't it? E.g., Elizabeth Taylor was born in 1932; if just look at her face, JUST her face, in the 1943 'Lassie Come Home' and in the 1951 'A Place in the Sun', darned tough to say how many years are between them. Why? Mother Nature has arranged, the way her face is endearing at age 7-10 is much the same as at age 17. Net, Mother Nature wants her to be endearing and to have her husband care for her much (but not exactly!) like her father did.

The Claudette Colbert character had been very carefully cared for by her very strong father; then she expected the same from her new husband, the Henry Fonda character. To her that log cabin didn't look much the same, and that Indian friend was the last straw! Her emotions had her sense that she wasn't being cared for, and she went hysterical. Rationally Fonda knew that that Indian friend was GOOD to have; emotionally Colbert went hysterical. Actually, what she did was self-destructive; the level 102 course goes into that, but I omit it here (hint: It can create dependency and, thus, have reproductive advantage).

Remember the Dr. Carol Nadelson, "Traditional marriage is about offspring, security, and caretaking". A human female is supposed to be CARED FOR, first by her father and then by her husband. In particular, she is not supposed to be out there, on rationality and little more, facing dangers, taking big risks, being the first in something very new and different in information technology entrepreneurship. Mother Nature was there LONG before Silicon Valley. Sorry 'bout that.

Or, we shouldn't forget the old psychology experiment of the wire mother and the cloth mother. Well, a mother in lots of soft, flowing cloth is much closer to the cloth mother; a mother dressed up in a navy suit and carrying a leather brief case into a tall glass and aluminum office building is much closer to the wire mother. Guess which one will be the stronger limb on the tree, what good mommies will be more like, and, thus, what little girls will want to be like.

So, how does a girl of 3-4 get interested in pretty, pink dresses? A woman who is a mommy has likely strongly followed at least some of the standard patterns. So, a little girl sees from Mommy and other mothers and other little girls what little girls _should_ look like and, thus, wants pretty, pink dresses.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple's iOS 9 Will Brick Your iPhone If Unofficially Repaired - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/error-53-bricking-repaired-apple-iphones/ <comment><USER2> And there goes device ownership down the toilet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Misleading title.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hope this isn't true.

That's one sucky "upgrade".</comment>


How I Learned More at one TEDx Conference than a Quarter in College - <AUTHOR> http://www.diplateevo.com/2012/12/disturbing-reality-how-learned-more-tedx-conference-than-quarter-college/

<comment><USER2> Maybe you're taking the wrong classes in college?

I love TEDx events, but they are more of an enlightening experience and source of inspiration than developing specific skills at something.

I don't think that TEDx will teach me MS Project effectively enough to be a great project manager.

TEDx won't teach me the programming principles to be a better programmers.

TEDx WILL inspire me more than my practical class in college will, it will give me lifehacks to make certain aspects of life better, but it won't be the ultimate solution.

There is no one single thing to do it all. Balance is needed. College, TEDx (or other outside sources of inspiration), and personal hard work and time.</comment>


Fears over the true state of China's economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11571438 <comment><USER2> And that's why you can't have truly capitalist systems with authoritarian, corrupt government. China and Russia both learning this lessons the hard ways as we speak. The core requirement for "free markets" to work is to have transparent, leveled playing field.

And while a lot of criticism against US financial system is completely valid (of course HN is bashing US first — because HN readers live there and it makes more sense to criticize something that you're more familiar with), it's 10s, 100s times healthier, just because the political competition between a multitude of actors guarantees that power will not be centralized in single hands.

My (completely idiotic and unprofessional) prognosis for the next decade: global financial system will repeat the same mistakes with India boom.

<comment><USER3> The one difference between China and India is that of Democracy. Even though both the nations boast of a corrupt governance system, yet the fact that in India, a non functioning government is more likely to get kicked out by an increasingly well aware population, makes it a safer bet in the long term I guess.

To Quote Thomas Friedman[0]:

"If India and China were both highways, the Chinese highway would be a six- lane, perfectly paved road, but with a huge speed bump off in the distance labeled "Political reform: how in the world do we get from Communism to a more open society?" When 1.3 billion people going 80 miles an hour hit a speed bump, one of two things happens: Either the car flies into the air and slams down, and all the parts hold together and it keeps on moving -- or the car flies into the air, slams down and all the wheels fall off. Which it will be with China, I don't know. India, by contrast, is like a highway full of potholes, with no sidewalks and half the streetlamps broken. But off in the distance, the road seems to smooth out, and if it does, this country will be a dynamo. The question is: Is that smoother road in the distance a mirage or the real thing?"

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/opinion/bangalore-hot- and-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/opinion/bangalore-hot-and- hotter.html)

<comment><USER4> Modi, the current prime minister of India got into power with big majority as the coalition govt(UPA coalition) at the was too corrupt. Modi promised big reforms, like Obama when he got first elected, but nothing positive yet for the majority of population. He is some what pro business, but not enough pro business or pro masses to worth any applause. I don't think pro business and pro masses policy is mutually exclusive. So far it looks like his election campaign was just a marketing campaign to get elected.

See gas price, crude oil price and rupee/dollar rate over last few years. *sorry about the formatting as this is html doesn't care about white spaces and <pre> tags doesn't work here

year 10 11 12 13 14 15 today

$ Crude 74 109 90 99 108 61 33

Rs.gas 51 63 71 63 71 66 64

$ vs Rs 46.2 44.7 57.1 59.2 60.2 63.4 66.8

The prices are deregulated. But still even though crude prices has fallen so much, govt keeps retail gas prices costlier by increasing taxes. Taxes form the majority of retail gas price.

Taxes vary between states, which is detrimental for business due to the amount of paperwork. Unified tax rate named GST was to be introduced(its not a law yet). The outrageous statement made by someone was that even though GST will charge uniform tax rate somewhere in the range of 14-18% gas prices will be kept out of its purview for the time being. The horror!

But things are bright for India in the long term as youth have high education. All most all have college degree. There are press or internet censorship.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand how keeping taxes on gas prices meant that he is all marketing gimmicks? Did he promise that he'll keep gas prices low? Gas is neither cheap nor costly with the current price in India[1]. It's midway compared to most of the countries and almost the same as China. India is not a oil producing country and keeping it cheap will hurt its economy. Btw INR/USD in 2010 was way stronger than today.

[1] [http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/](http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/)

<comment><USER4> What I hate about the guy is the increasing religious intolerance that is happening because of this party, and him doing not much about it. He gained a lot of votes by promising to fix corruption and telling "good days are coming". People are actually frustrated as "good days are not coming".

India imports majority of crude and refines all petroleum within the country. Business aren't paying international wages for their refinery workers, they get paid normal wages like for any other Indian. Yet when it comes to selling the petroleum products refined within the country, oil marketing companies used to say they were selling at loss. Not real loss, but hypothetical loss if they weren't selling at international prices -the companies were always making profit. These are listed companies and their annual reports are public.

Now Modi may have not promised he'll keep gas prices low, but is keeping it artificially high what he should do?

Keeping it cheap will not hurt economy as it has a direct impact on prices of food and transportation. People would've been able to save more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> China has a history of inflating economic performance indicators. Massive overestimation of grain yields was one of the key factors contributing to the Great Chinese Famine [0] [1]. It wouldn't be surprising if this would still be the case.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine)

[1]: [http://www.missedinhistory.com/blog/missed-in-history-the- gr...](http://www.missedinhistory.com/blog/missed-in-history-the-great- famine/)

<comment><USER7> I think comparing the state of China during and after Maoism, especially after the advent of Deng Xiaoping as head of state during the 70s, is a completely unfair comparison. It really speaks a lot to the understanding us westerners have of actual Chinese politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The system (capitalist or communist) determines to a great extent all kinds of curious behavior in people.

Like reporting numbers.

In communism, people are incentivized to inflate the positive numbers and deflate the negative numbers, because the primary goal is to maintain a good and submissive relationship with the higher-up party chief. The higher-up has the same incentive before his higher-up.

If you fall from grace with your higher-up (by not being able to achieve the numbers planned by the party), then your career is over (and possibly that of your family and business partners too). So you _have to_ give him those numbers. If you do, he will take care of you and with time, you will grow.

Then there's another property of communism: people steal.

Not only you have to report higher productivity than the set goal, you also have to cover up for all the stealing that took place below you and the "favors" you make to the higher-ups.

Of course this is illegal, but when people start doing this, they become partners in crime and now it's about life an death. Falling from grace can actually mean doing hard time in jail or even getting the capital punishment.

This system works well when the economy grows - the pressure to perform beyond expectations is increased with each layer of bureaucracy and is more than just about "job security" \- it's about survival - so people _have to_ produce those numbers.. even if it means lying.

Of course the hard work is done by the same oppressed "working class" that the system was supposed to help in the first place.

Now, I have _no idea_ what's going on in China and if these properties apply to their particular flavor of communism, but I suspect they do, because this is how human beings have to behave in that game to win.

And that means that the numbers reported by the government are probably off by quite a bit and it's possible that even they have no idea what the real situation is.

<comment><USER9> You can probably replace communism by capitalism in most sentence of your post. Regarding the incentive to inflate numbers, think about quarter report, or of things like Enron, Volkswagen or Autonomy (which was sold as an inflated price).

The main difference is that in an autocratic system, it is easier to not get caught by using force to silence oppositions or whistle blowers. In a working democracy with some kind of transparency and regulation, you can't lie for ever. (But then you can still say you are flabbergasted by what the auditors have found and you will do everything in your power to find out why such shocking activity took place and restore the public confidence in your company)

<comment><USER10> Corporations have a bigger principal agent problem. But in capitalism you also have privately owned businesses which doesn't have as much bloat. And the corporations have to compete with these.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is the true state of US economy? Could it be viable without the government debt growing at a crazy fast pace?

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Debt is actually growing at a moderate rate, as it tends to do in most growing economies. The United States took on enormous amounts of debt leading up to and following World War II, but the postwar economic boom and ensuing inflation (which is fine in a healthy and growing economy) reduced the unprecedented debt "crisis" to barely a footnote in American financial history.

<comment><USER11> I pretty in doubt the American economy will be booming in an observable future. And debt is growing faster than GDP: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+government+debt+vs+u...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+government+debt+vs+us+gdp) , so I'm still in question how economy will survive without debt money supply.

<comment><USER12> I wonder what GDP in China will look like in 3 years when they have a huge baby boom.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Huge baby boom? From where? Just because they've relaxed the one child policy doesn't mean everyone is in a rush to have kids. A more common phenomenon is men saving every penny to someday afford a house, because the few single women refuse to date a man with anything less.

Every single economy that transitions from agriculture to industry experiences the same fall in birth rates. Having a lot of kids goes from being an insurance against elderly poverty to an insurmountable burden on your focus and finance. Most of the Chinese couples who have one child are happy to leave it from that.

How will China experience a baby boom any time soon? Why 3 years? Where's your evidence?

<comment><USER12> I have no evidence I can't see into the future and no one else in this thread can. It's pure speculation, all I know for sure is the official birthrate will go up and I'd bet any amount of money on that. I picked 3 years because if you didn't know it takes 9 months to have a baby so that'd be a good time frame to see the rate up. Any other questions?

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Yes, why will the birth rate go up if the cost of raising children remains high and China's economy appears to be slowing down? These are macroeconomic signs of lower birth rates, not higher.

<comment><USER12> Birthrate will go up, get over it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Naysayers have been predicting the demise of China for the past thirty years. See Gordon Chang, idiot extraordinaire.

The reality is that growth, in the long-run, is now in Asia (think of the hundreds of millions of Chinese still living in the countryside...).

This round of modernization (the third wave, after England, America+Western Europe) involves 4BN people led by India and China and they're just getting started. Take a pause and think of what that means. Four billion. BILLION.

We're entering the age of Asia. Just wait and see.

I think the bigger fear in China (at least amongst the leadership) is some crazy environmental disaster. Think of the hundreds of millions that live on the Yangtze... a massive flooding event that wipes up power/clean water is much more likely cause of revolution than an economic meltdown.

The US can barely handle Katrina... China is 10x more dense. Something like that would be death knell for CCP control.

<comment><USER14> > Naysayers have been predicting the demise of China for the past thirty > years.

Yes. They even use the same sentence and arguments every six months since 30 years. I live in China and keep my eyes open, and what I see here is that people go to work, big trucks deliver bunches of new cars from the factories to the cities, universities produce an increasing number of highly skilled engineers, et cetera.

<comment><USER13> I've yet to not be astonished by the pace of development and change in China, despite my frequent trips there since the mid-90s.

Especially in the hinterland... it's really night and day. Literally in a year you go from farms to skyscrapers. Crazy fast development.

The world is starting to notice though... now you see more Chinese middle- class tourists, more Chinese students (not the smart ones who just goto the ivies, but the rich mediocre students in community / for-profit / tertiary colleges), and real estate investors (which is starting to be a huge problem in Cali, PNW, etc.).

This is nothing but a road bump for China. The Chinese are hungry as hell. I don't really think the west fully appreciates their cultural drive.

The bigger story I don't see much mention of in the press is the growing dilemma facing Europe. Do they ally themselves with America or the growing East. This will grow to become a key political concern for the EU in the next 10-20-30 years.

<comment><USER14> Yes it's a road bump, yes China is back in the front row, yes they're hungry. But once the U.S. has accepted this reality that its not a solo play anymore, there should be no need for Europe to choose, because the battle we will have to fight is against a big chunk of the planet sinking back in the dark, and we can win this battle only if we go together, U.S., Europe and China.

<comment><USER14> Expanding on the battle we civilized humans (US + EU + China) need to fight together: this is not a battle for tanks, drones and helicopters (if it was, the US would do it well enopugh), it is a fight where the weapons are words, values and time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's a related and fairly contemporary piece by a China economist I read sometimes: [http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-10/china- isn-t...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-10/china-isn-t-headed- for-a-financial-crisis)

</comment><comment><USER16> Economists have been saying the same thing for almost 10 years, I didn't see anything new in this article.

</comment><comment><USER17> I thought the true state of any economic agent didn't matter, that what matters is the perceived trust you can leverage to borrow or lend credit.

</comment><comment><USER18> Whatever be such commentaries, just look at their Forex reserve, don't think it can be forged.</comment>


The Myth of 'Learning Styles' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth-of-learning-styles/557687/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> My SO teaches elementary math, and we've had a few discussions about this.

When teaching a new concept, say the area of a parallelogram, she will present the concept in multiple different ways:

\- Give printouts of parallelograms on graph paper, so the students can count the number of squares in a parallelogram. Also give them scissors and see what happens.

\- Give students two triangles and a square (which they know how to get the areas of already), as well as some tape.

\- Simply give students the length of the base, height, and the area of multiple parallelograms.

The interesting thing is that there will be a somewhat equal split among which way makes the concept click for the students. Some will instantly start counting squares on graph paper and figure it out. Some will tape the different shapes together and go from there. Others will play with the base and height numbers and arrive at a formula.

So while "learning styles" may be a misnomer, I do believe that presenting one topic in a variety of ways is beneficial.

<comment><USER3> I strongly agree in presenting a topic in a variety of ways since being able to relate new information to information already known is a major key to learning new concepts. The more ways a topic is presented, the better chance a person's brain can relate it to something already known.

I have a strong assumption that when many people hear "learning styles", they assume it to this instead of auditory vs visual.

<comment><USER4> > I have a strong assumption that when many people hear "learning styles", > they assume it to this instead of auditory vs visual.

Or the assume each individual only benefits from one in all situations (being half awake, interested in the subject, etc, etc). Which is a ridiculous assumption once you really think about it.

<comment><USER5> And yet I've have teachers growing up who gave classes workshops to help them identify their learning style, as if it was as inherent as a pokemon type.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Around 20 years ago, I met Dawna Markova at a conference where she spoke about the work she had done in learning styles. My recollection is that the Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic forms was not about how you "learn", but rather on how you stay "focused".

Researchers found that there were three brianwave patterns that corresponded to your level of focus. For me, Visual stimuli kept me focused. Auditory stimuli practically put me to sleep. And Kinesthetic stimuli are transitional for me. In meetings where there is just discussion or words on a chart, I find myself fidgeting, and that helps me stay focused. So I am V-K-A. (The first letter for what keeps you focsed, the second letter for the transitional mode, and the third letter for what causes you to drift into la-la-land.) The research found that the six combinations of these three types of stimuli was equally distributed in the population.

The lesson for teachers and presenters is that you should provide all three stimuli in your presentation so that all people get what they need to stay focused.

Markova wrote a wonderful book called "How Your Child Is Smart". It was fantastic resource for bringing up our children and helping them stay focused in all of the ways they actually learned.

<comment><USER7> I agree with your comment on being "focused." In analyzing my own learning preferences, I found it is much easier for me to stay focused if I can speed my way through something. Speed is the key for me, not the format.

For example, if I have the choice to learn the same information via a video or book, I'd opt for the book because I know I can read a lot quicker than the person in the video is going to speak. This helps me to stay focused. On the other hand, if I can speed the video up to 4 or 5 times its normal rate, I would opt for that over the printed page because I can listen faster than I can read. For me, it isn't the format as much as the speed at which I can complete my learning that is important.

<comment><USER8> I highly doubt you absorb much at 4-5x speed. 3x speed is very fast -- if the speaker talks quickly, it's borderline unintelligible.

<comment><USER7> I understand where you're coming from. When I first started doing this, 1.5x was the maximum I could go and still retain information. After a while, I was able to retain information at 2x, then 2.5x and so on. It took me a year or two of practice to get to this speed. It also depends on what you're trying to learn, how clearly the speaker is enunciating, and whether the speaker has a heavy accent or not, I guess, but it works for me in most cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a good article, but it only touches on the main issue with learning styles. Multiple independent groups of educational psychologists (if I remember correctly it was three) reviewed all the articles they could find on learning styles. They found that the majority of the studies had poor experimental design, since they were missing proper control groups. Of the remaining studies there were more examples of negative results for learning styles than positive results. This was pretty damning, given the publication bias for positive results in academic research. The article links to one of these reviews, but here is another one: [https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3....](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.pdf)

I teach science, and it's frustrating that nearly all of my students can tell me their learning style. Their previous teachers have taught them about learning styles as a way to improve their studying, and they've jumped on that information. But the literature indicates that matching instruction to a learning style doesn't improve learning. This is a total waste because we're effectively giving students a magic talisman to help them learn science, because once students find out it's wrong they'll be less likely to take our advice on studying, and because the time we waste on it could be spent on telling people about real things that actually improve learning.

<comment><USER10> The studies I have seen (I'll admit- I didn't read TFA- maybe I have in the past idk) all used some sort of _survey_ to identify learning styles. Nobody, to my knowledge, has measured _learning_ by modalities to identify them.

You are spot on that attempts to match instruction to learning style have been futile in the VARK-like learning style classifications. They also assume that if a student has a learning style, it will be the same across subjects. If it turns out there is such a thing as learning styles I woudn't be at all surprised if it varied by what you are learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since it's an identity thing, I'm guessing people are _not_ going to want to let this one go. Just like they won't let go of their identity as a Meyers- Briggs I-N-T-whatever-the-hell, even though there's zero evidence for it as a meaningful framework.

<comment><USER12> I've found that M-B or the like is really useful to give people words to talk about who they think they are (which can be incredibly difficult without some starting point). When you have words to describe something, you can start to talk about it and in this case, how your personality interacts with others. That is, where are there things in the ways others describe themselves that you recognize in yourself or that you find entirely foreign. Then, you can ask how can recognizing these types of differences help you get along better.

I don't see M-B as a scientific readout, but it is helpful in giving tools to help people relate. It's only difficult when folks go off the deep end ("Aw shit, I'm a Hufflepuff!" syndrome) .

<comment><USER13> Or just as a starting point to realize that people are different and view the world differently. Many users approach software differently than programmers for example.

The problem comes when you start doing things like match people to jobs or tasks based on their MB profiles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Every time someone someone tries to sell me on this tired idea, I ask them: if you had to teach someone the difference between different bird calls, e.g. that of the robin vs. the sparrow, and you're told that person is a "visual learner", do you mean to tell me you'd opt to show them the oscilloscope representation of the sound wave that each bird makes rather than playing them an actual recording of each call?

It's a patently reductionist and limiting idea that human beings have a stronger modality for learning any information regardless of the type. Yes, there may be a nugget of truth that some people will have profoundly more tactile sensitivity for example, and will thrive in activities like dealing cards, or juggling, or wrestling where that modality is embedded in the purpose of that activity. But the overgeneralization to say that this person will, for example, learn how to read better by touching words and letters rather than proven phonics methods is ridiculous.

<comment><USER15> Your point is well made, but it's amusing that you use "proven phonics methods" as an example of something that's obviously the best way to learn something... Apparently, there's very heated debate on that subject. (News to me, as of a couple months ago.)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/the- rea...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/the-reading- wars/376990/)

<comment><USER14> My wife is a reading instructor. I myself was a licensed teacher in a former life. Phonics is not the totality of reading education, but it's definitely core and dominant. The article you cite speaks to a political controversy, not a pedagogical debate backed by conflicting data.

Point me to the body of research on whole-language or some other approach as the dominant way to teach reading (basic reading to early primary grades, that is) and at least one school district that definitively promotes it as the dominant way, and I'll seriously reconsider that it hasn't been debunked.

<comment><USER16> I can't point you at research, but I can point you at a child who has learned reading through whole language and who emotionally resists any attempt to "sound out" words. If you spend time with ~5 year olds, I expect you'll met some who have started learning to read before they've joined kindergarten and started learning phonics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Personally I believe it's all about random success through variety: Present the same idea enough different ways and you're more likely to stumble across something which happens to click for a given student at a given moment.

In some cases, the _overlap_ between different (individually unsatisfying) attempts to teach may itself be valuable, helping the student eventually make whatever intuitive leap is necessary for that moment of epiphany.

</comment><comment><USER18> I keep seeing these articles, but I think they're only debunking the craziest interpretation of learning style theory. Obviously it's not going to be perfect, and you're a fool to pigeon-hole yourself into one mode of learning. But there's too much anecdotal evidence to dismiss the whole idea. When I've raised this before, over person suggested that we view learning styles as deficiencies in particular modes of learning, rather than special abilities, which I think fits both the evidence and the overall theme of learning styles just fine.

People's brains are different, and learning is an important thing we do, so it should surprise no one when people learn differently. It should also surprise no one when those differences turn out to be complicated and hard to measure, just like our brains. So yeah, the pop psych version is over simplified, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

</comment><comment><USER19> If I had a nickel every time a student came up to me and said, "I'm an x learner and your class is very y," I'd have a lot of nickels.

Every single time what they really mean is, "I'm doing terrible in your class, and even though it's probably my attitude or study habits or preparedness, I'm going to blame you."

<comment><USER20> i do actually learn best by reading. if the professor produces a set of authoritative notes for the class, i will get an A on every exam. as long as the professor makes it clear exactly what sections of the text are important, i will learn everything and still get an A every time.

if the professor says important stuff during lecture that cannot be read somewhere, i have no chance of retaining that information.

<comment><USER21> Writing own notes help in situation where informations is only said. Then you can read it. Pretty much no one is able to consistently remember heard information after single hearing, overwhelming majority of people need to revise it.

<comment><USER16> Writing helps because _writing_ is an effective learning style, even if you burn the notes as soon as you write them. (Reading might help even more, but reading without writing helps less than writing + reading)

<comment><USER21> Learning style theory says that some people learn by reading, others by writing and yet others even differently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This article really just seems to be mincing words and debating what "style" means.

The fact remains: some methods of presenting information is worse than others. Some students will think they hate the subject material, but really what they hate is the teacher's relationship to the subject material. The teacher understands a subject a certain way, and that way might not make sense to a student. A different teacher will likely be able to present in a way that student _will_ like.

Perhaps that's not a difference in "style" but it's a difference that matters.

<comment><USER23> The myth is that everyone has a learning style, that style can be summed up as one of a few categories, the style never changes, and will be stable year to year, and once you have identified what the style is with a questionnaire, you can tailor teaching to it to target particular students.

Once you weaken all those things, the predictive value of the theory is pretty well nil.

<comment><USER16> I've heard many more debunkings of learning styles than I've heard advocacies of learning styles. It's just fun to be contrarian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Learning and Teaching are hard. Maybe learning styles are a "myth", maybe there just infinitely more complex things going on in a classroom/school than can be controlled for.

Also, some people are smart (read: have preexisting understanding of the concepts that precede the material being taught, typically combined with a desire to learn the material) and some people are stupid (read: the opposite of smart) and that can create its own set of hurdles.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't know if 'learning styles' are a thing or not, but I will point out that there are two broad categories. The first, which is often refuted in studies like these, I think of "sensory input" learning styles. The VARK (there are others) are basically, roughly, talking about how we get information into our brains. More or less the five senses.

More interesting to me are a second group, the cognitive learning styles, such as [http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Lea...](http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Learning_Styles.html)

These are more about the mental processing that goes on. Are you better at learning one step at a time, or do you need to get the "big picture" before the steps even make sense and are somewhat tractable to you?

<comment><USER24> I think it's hard to refute the idea that "certain people do better learning certain things in certain environments." It's hard to figure out which levers should be used (change the people? change the material? change the learning environment/teaching style?) to best educate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm impressed that "Learning Styles" merely show no evidence of helping, rather than being actively harmful.

When I grapple with a hard problem, I will draw diagrams, talk to myself, use my hands or nearby objects as models, and also do the internal mental equivalents of all those things. In particular, I keep switching between things that might be called "geometrical visualisation", "formal reasoning" and "informal verbalisation".

I solve hard problems by tackling bits of them with whatever tool is works and then I try all the tools again on whatever parts of the problem remain. Thus the different tools work together, and are much more powerful combined than individually. If I stuck to using my "natural" tool, I might learn to use it very well, but I would get stuck as soon as it was the wrong tool. I would loose all that lovely synergy.

</comment><comment><USER26> Bull Pucky!

Let me tell you my story. By third grade I could not read. I didn't get it. How could people remember all those words? Yet I had one of those off the wall IQs. In third grade they put me in Remedial Reading taught by Mrs. Gordon. If there is a Heaven, then there must be a special place in it for people like Mrs. Gordon.

Up until then we were supposed to learn to read by reading. It was the big thing then: learn to read the same way we learned to speak: by doing it. It worked for lots of kids. Not for me.

Mrs. Gordon taught me phonetics. That summer I was reading novels.

I once read a textbook on cognitive psychology. The author ranted about how awful phonetics was.

Clearly there are differences in learning styles. VARK appears to be wrong. It looks like too much thought and too little experimentation to me.

That doesn't mean there aren't differences in learning styles.

<comment><USER27> > Up until then we were supposed to learn to read by reading. It was the big > thing then: learn to read the same way we learned to speak: by doing it. It > worked for lots of kids. Not for me.

My impression is that it's pretty much settled science that Mrs. Gordon was right and phonics is better than or as good as look-say for the vast majority of children.

Most children might cope better than you did, but they may have done even better with Mrs. Gordon's phonics, and moreover the most successful ones may be "secretly" using phonics-type methods which they either worked out for themselves, or learnt at home or kindergarten.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Are there styles which are not tied to the type of sense input? I know that I sometimes learn some things by rote, going through a linear process, and subsequently discover patterns in it. Other times, I need to know the abstract principles behind a procedure before I can work in the details. Anecdotally, that suggests that there are two different ways of conceptualizing tasks (i.e., something close to "learning styles"), and also suggests that different tasks require different learning styles.

Is there any research into this meaning of learning styles, as opposed to tied to sensory modes?

</comment><comment><USER29> I've never really thought about "learning styles" in this way. For me, it has more to do with nurture than nature (i.e. culture, upbringing, environment etc) than something inherent. I recall a talk on "systems thinking" and how certain tribes in Africa (? - I don't recall exactly) fared very poorly on certain Western tests that required them to group certain objects together. It turns out that due to their culture they thought of things in terms of their roles in a system, rather than classifications that may seem more fundamental to us. e.g. We might group cooking utensils together, whereas they (and this is just an arbitrary example) would group the utensils, food and seeds together because their taxonomy works on a "higher" (or rather, different) level. From this, it seemed obvious to me that certain learning "styles" are better suited to developing a _certain type of thinking_.

So from a practical point of view, I don't think that it's a myth at all...

</comment><comment><USER7> Personally, I've never put much stock in the "style of learner" mantra. I can learn anything I want to via whatever means I wish. For instance, I can read sheet music and I can learn to play songs by ear.

Having said that, I definitely do have my preferences for learning, and sometimes I decide not to learn something simply because it isn't in a format I'm interested in ingesting at the moment. In nearly every case, it isn't as much about the format, per se, as the time it requires. I don't like spending a lot of time on something if I don't have to. So, if I know I can learn a song in half the time playing it by ear vs. reading sheet music, and all I currently have available to me is sheet music, I'll wait until later to learn the song; not because I can't learn it via sheet music, but because the motivation just isn't there with that particular format due to the time I perceive it will take.

</comment><comment><USER30> The learning styles thing always confused me, because I would take the test to see which type I was, and get a different answer each time. I think it's because the way that you process different subjects just isn't necessarily consistent.

Ex: \- Anything related to music is auditory. I learned to read sheet music, but I can never "visualize" the sounds from that. I would just have to play it and see what comes out. If I heard the first couple notes of a song I've heard before though, I can easily hear the entire song in my head and then figure it out on an instrument.

\- Foreign languages, by contrast, I needed good printouts for. I'm slow at processing streaming sounds in real time, and even more so for unfamiliar languages. I think my brain just has to do a lot of post-processing with full context to make sense of verbal language. But I could read and write the languages just fine, and if the language is somewhat phonetic, I can lean on my spelling knowledge to speak it halfway decently.

\- anything technical or mathematical requires that I solve some sort of problem with it to understand

\- Any "softer" subject (psychology, history, economics) is best reinforced when I learn via interesting stories. I like that so many textbooks have those "real world application" sections or whatever to tie things into history or things I've seen in real life. A good orator though can also tell a compelling story to keep my attention engaged on the subject.

The absolute worst though is when an educator makes a slide show, prints those slides out and hands them out before class starts, then reads the slides and answers questions. That pretty much guarantees I have no investment in the class, as I don't really have incentive to take notes or listen, and I won't be surprised by anything because it only takes like 3 minutes to actually skim everything and see it's just bullet points pulled from the text book.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is an example of a myth that just won't die. The Skeptics Society (to give but one example) has been trying for years to put this nonsense to rest:

[https://www.skeptic.com/insight/the-myth-of-learning- styles/](https://www.skeptic.com/insight/the-myth-of-learning-styles/)

I have even made multiple visits to my children's schools and tried to explain the actual research connected with pedagogy and communication but to little avail:

[https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3....](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.pdf)

Like the myth that "we only use 10% of our brains", the myth about learning styles seems immortal.

<comment><USER32> > Like the myth that "we only use 10% of our brains"

I've heard that the commonly-debunked version of this is a totally misrepresented version of the original claim. The debunked one being that we only use 10% of our brain matter ever, while the original claim was something more like "at a given instant in time, only ~10% of your neurons are firing".

<comment><USER27> > "at a given instant in time, only ~10% of your neurons are firing".

At any given instant in time, your computer is using less than 50% of its RAM: more than half of the bits are off!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So-called "learning styles" is only useful in that it forces the instructor to repeat the material 3 or 4 times thus reinforcing what he's already said. Repetition isn't necessarily a bad thing but wrapping it in this mythology leaves some to be desired. And this myth is alive and well at least where I go to school. One professor even has us go through a book and fill out a questionnaire to "determine" our style. And another, while not doing anything with it, brings the idea up frequently. I don't want to get a target painted on my back by going against orthodoxy so I play along. Sucks though. Feels like a real waste of time humoring this nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER34> So glad to see this article. From time to time, my wife will ask me "how do I get the kids to learn X?" My answer is always the same: "Forget about the 'learning styles'. Drill baby, drill!"

<comment><USER21> Except that pedagogy matters and the way you teach things matters. Learning style don't exists research is not in opposition to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think the issue is more about teaching styles rather than learning styles. Teachers often only know one way to teach things and can't adapt at all to level differences. They often enjoy working MOST with the kids who ALREADY know everything due to tutors or parents.

So the kernel of truth is that different approaches are needed for different individuals but it jumped too quickly into specific archetypes.

Another kernel of truth is that everyone has the same potential but the majority flow often dienfranchises individuals who can't take advantage of the mainstream winds.

</comment><comment><USER36> Clearly, the 'learning styles' propaganda we've been fed for decades was hogwash, like the type A/B theory or the MB personality style concept.

However, that doesn't mean that thinking about multiple ways to learn a concept is fruitless. Personally, the more ways I can be taught a concept, the better my chances are of understanding it.

I've benefited enormously from professors in math, physics, or computer science who've taken several approaches to teaching a difficult concept.

</comment><comment><USER37> Even if there _were_ distinct styles, seems like it would be better to develop the ones you're _not_ good at, than the one you're already good at. Specifically this should be biased toward, and I say this in all seriousness, the teaching style that is cheapest. Because that is going to be the default not only in school but throughout life, and wherever people are concerned about costs, which is most places. Get good at that, and you've got it made.

</comment><comment><USER32> > You can't visualize a perfect French accent, for example.

Maybe not a "perfect" one, but you _can_ visualize the sounds - pitch, hardness, etc. It's something I did back when learning Spanish to help memorize certain pronunciations. Think "maluma" vs "takete". But the shapes - which I'm hesitant to even call shapes - are extremely abstract, enough so it's not something I'd be able easily to draw on a piece of paper.

</comment><comment><USER38> I think the only thing the referenced studies proved is that people don't know what their actual learning style is.

</comment><comment><USER39> It only take one real counterexample to disprove something, so let me take a stab at this:

If learning styles were not real then why would people waste time making boooring videos when text is so much easier to both create an consume?

Or am I right that some people actually like those long winded videos? What about podcasts?

Spoken as someone who would sometimes skip the lectures, read the book and get best in class grades.

</comment><comment><USER40> yet another phenomenon plenty of people experience subjectively being 'disproven' by experiment. It's no wonder the stock of so-called experts is diminishing...

</comment><comment><USER41> the "but it might have had something to do with the self-esteem movement of the late '80s and early '90s."

tells me that the author has a political axe to grind here

</comment><comment><USER10> Obligatory YouTube from Willingham (mentioned in article).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk)

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't care who calls what a myth. I'm different, and I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm special.

[https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/226886/origin- of...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/226886/origin-of-i-hear- and-i-forget-i-see-and-i-remember-i-do-and-i-understand)

This doesn't apply to me, now even 40 years later. I hear and I remember, I see and I forget. The doing part is correct enough.

</comment><comment><USER43> Much pedagogy, such as "learning styles" and "multiple intelligences" is an effort to evade the reality that IQ is important and varies among students.</comment>


Ask HN: Best tips for holding great conversations with liberal arts alumni? - <AUTHOR> I'm attending a university alumnus dinner, being the only CS-student there. <comment><USER2> After my PhD in EE, when I started my graduate work in Linguistics I had quite a shock to see how different they thought and argued (and then I took a course in the philosophy of department, _that's_ a different story altogether).

My advice would be: Try to get the most out of meeting with them. It's easy to look down on the "soft sciences", but you'll be surprised at the insights you may learn. You should not use jargon, even if it sounds mundane to you, they won't understand it and think you're doing it deliberately to look clever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the advice!

Also, I should mention that I am indeed fascinated by the multitude of topics that other have studied, but that I don't know anything of. That's the problem, I believe: I want to get past the mundane "So what is that?" sort of questions.

<comment><USER3> Try to keep it going; all you can do is hold your half of the conversation. If you don't know what something is, try to relate it to something you do know -- if the other person is holding up their end, they'll work with you and you'll have a decent conversation.

Edit: It's really the same as holding a conversation with, say, someone who's in a technical profession you don't know about, or a family member you haven't met for a long time. We liberal arts majors aren't aliens!

<comment><USER2> I disagree, not with liberals arts majors not being aliens part, but this being the same as talking to someone from any technical profession you don't know about. In my experience, the thinking process thought and praised in liberals arts fields is in some respects quite different from that in any technical field, as to sometimes be a real impediment in communication.

One example from a topic I worked on: author attribution using stylometry. To a CS (or EE or whatever) the thought that you can take a corpus composed of writings from various authors and train classifiers to differentiate the unique styles of each would be mundane. To some English majors, such a strong structuralist approach would border on sacrilegious (remember Prof. Keating's reaction to such an approach to judge poetry in _Dead Port's Society_ ). Each approach has something to be said for it but it has to be done delicately, otherwise polite discussion becomes impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If/when you need to disagree/contradict them frame it in a way that is not like you are the authority.

Generally, it's probably better (more polite) to say "I am pretty sure it's actually..." or, "I always thought it was .." even when you know 100%.

Wikileaks is probably a good topic of conversation (politics and technology).

<comment><USER5> This. Conversation is a give-and-take. Simply declaring that the other person is wrong and that you are right makes people less open to continue talking to you, as it makes you seem combative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just approach it like you would any other conversation. Ask questions about their lives - everyone likes to talk about themselves. Make jokes. Try not to be nervous. Be yourself. There is no need to act differently just because you're talking to liberal arts alumni.

</comment><comment><USER7> Assume you are below average: <http://sivers.org/below-average></comment>


Treating autism by targeting the gut - <AUTHOR> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-06-autism-gut.html <comment><USER2> I can't wait for more research and improved methods for healing the gut</comment>