Printer-friendly version
Author:
[Some say mine’s not organized at all, but that’s beside the point.]
Stanford says they have a model that classifies brain scans into male or female.
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/02/men-women-bra...
I think the idea has shown up in stories, and here we now have something more specific.
Comments
Brains are strange things
One aptitude test I did for a job as a Software Developer (after 15+ years in the field and the owner of two patents ) said that I was totally unsuited to the job. They seemed put out when I told them about the patents as the company that I was looked to be employed at was a licensee of those patents. I told them what to do with their stinking job. I got the last laugh as they went bust a few years later.
Being a leftie and trans, means that my brain is wired differently from the average person. I don't need no stinking test to tell me that I am a square peg in a round hole.
Those big academic grants have to be spent somewhere don't they?
Predictive Testing
Right out of college, I took an aptitude test from NW Mutual Life. They told me that I had no aptitude for selling. Two years later I was the top salesman in the nation for the largest insurance company. I created one of the most used sales organizations in my industry.
During five decades in business, I hired hundreds of people. Judging by how those hires panned out, I've concluded that tests and interviews either give you the candidates you want -- or the biggest liars.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Deeply suspicious
Sorry, but I'm with Samantha here. I am deeply suspicious of any academic "research" which makes predictions about psychology. The wisest psychologist I ever spoke to said that in all her studies, all she could conclude is that "everyone is different" and should be treated as an exception. Knowing what a brain looks like, even when you can measure the electrical energy within it, is very different from knowing how someone thinks. Until we crack that, artificial intelligence is precisely that, the imitation game.
Lucy x
"Lately it occurs to me..
what a long strange trip its been."
True AI is a long way off
The current fake news AI systems are as intelligent as a goldfish when compared to us.
They can't handle the what if situations that we meet a thousand times a day. Computers (the Digital sort) work on 1's and 0's. That is the equivalent of 'Yes' and 'No'. The world is not like that. There are 50,000 shades of grey between them. (pun intended).
Until systems that are not us can handle that we won't have true AI. That in-between thing is why Asimov invented the Positronic Brain alongside his rules of Robotics.
But... at the moment, AI sells stuff big time. Lots of bandwagon jumping going on here.
Samantha
Goldfish?
Though I’m not actually conversant with the number of “neurons” (real or modeled) I’m thinking probably more like “fruit fly.”
> The current fake news AI
> The current fake news AI systems are as intelligent as a goldfish when compared to us.
Just call them Artificial Idiot - same abbreviation, and more proper meaning :-p
What I learned by interviewing PhDs
Avoid asking about their research. To finish a PhD requires passing an oral exam that often requires showing strong confidence in conclusions from weak data. Asking more questions will reveal only what the credential already shows.
So nope, I’m not saying that the study here is valid. Maybe of more interest is its possible abuse: yet another way to cloak authoritarianism as “science.”
Tarring a lot of folks with one brush, there...
Psychology is faddy; education likewise. Since they discuss internal things that aren't directly testable, they can debate them all the way to retirement: a nice little earner.
A PhD in science or engineering, on the other hand... that's got to be much more strongly rooted in evidence.
Personally, the qualification I distrust is the MBA. People with MBAs always seem to be looking for a quick fix and a quick buck. Maximising shareholder value seldom involves such unglamorous, pedestrian tasks as investment or training. Look what the MBAs did to Boeing, once they infiltrated the boardroom and ousted the engineers.
But whatever. Your experiences may vary.
Sugar and Spiiice – TG Fiction by Bryony Marsh
Data sets
A LOT of scientific papers will also cherry pick their data sets. Being in positions that require them to produce paper after paper and have it means something gives a lot of pressure to produce. So if you can form your data set to match your hypothesis by leaving out certain results, well, there you go. A large part of peer review/etc is setup to catch this kind of stuff but it's still rampant. You can also just test and select subjects that you are pretty sure will match your ideas, thus making finding the 'truth' that much harder.
Brain?
Organized? Not mine.
But seriously, about this discussion's trajectory, when I did my Ph.D. physics work, I tried to do the right thing. (Any problems I had were my brain's sabotage.)
-- Daphne Xu
That’s a good start
I’m sure there are some grad students who don’t even do that, but I never met anyone like that, or more likely, never got to know them well enough to tell. I was too worried about my own work.
I don’t think people often set out to do junk science, but good intentions can decay. The department wants room for new students, professors are measured by how many PhDs they produce, families apply pressure, a job may be accepted before the thesis is finished, funding sources may make it clear what results they expect; the list goes on.
What’s a real breakthrough? Something that changes thinking in a way that stands the test of time; nothing in a press release unless announcing a Nobel or similar.
Those May Happen
I will extend the statement about myself to the entire department: they all tried to do the right thing in physics. Understand it and communicate it. Sometimes it took time for someone to understand something, but that's being human. As are blunders.
-- Daphne Xu
Organized brain
I maintain that if you look at a persons work space or their personal space you can get an idea of just how organized their brain is. It an inverse scale. The more organized their surroundings are, the less organized the brain is.
If you need everything to have a place and have everything in it's place to function at peak capacity, then you brain isn't organized. However, if you can have your work scattered in what appears to be disheveled piles and tools to do it randomly placed and still achieve all you need to without difficulty, your brain is highly organized. It keeps track of where you've laid things you need without all the need for creating an organized space.
I have a sign that says, "Don't straighten up my desk, you'll ruin my filing system."
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Weight Based Filing
The bigger and heavier the document is, the closer it is to you as you couldn't throw it so far. It's worked for generations in my family.
Similar to clothes having a specific place. Wash basket if they're dirty, on the bed during the day, on the chair in my room when I'm asleep. It's what works. I have expanded to having a few boxes for socks, etc. Maybe in about five years time I'll even upgrade them to proper plastic storage boxes and not cardboard boxes from deliveries.
Desks ... {Snort} One time we learned the Biggest ...
... of the Big-Wigs would be coming around - and we were told messy desks were a Very Bad Idea.
We all scrambled to tidy and hide our 'junk heaps' ... except for one person.
They were on vacation. Oh-oh.
So their colleagues took and hid away all the piles, labeled each pile, and left them a map showing the desk location of each pile.
Our desks gave the Grand Big-Wig no problems, And vice-versa.
---
My desk? I've got year+ old junk mail.
Where's a Big-Wig for the one time I need one?
I may be alone on this
But I think personality tests are quite helpful. I don't think they are that useful in predicting success or failure in a certain field. But I have found them quite helpful in assessing strengths. These tests usually are not a surprise. I think they are quite useful to understand how to maximize a person's potential. I believe they can be invaluable when tasked with managing a person, team, or just yourself. I know I do my best work under pressure. I know what my greatest strength is, and hence my greatest weakness is, and how to leverage that to my advantage.
But they are definitely not a panacea, and in almost all cases, they are not a substitute for a strong work ethic. :DD TAF
DeeDee
Me?
Always knew I was a girl. Earliest recognition that 'Houston, we have a problem' was at age two.
Don't care what the ideologues say: I am female, my life is female, my associates see me as female---end of.