engineers' brains

Hello John,

"Parental influence doesn't stand a chance next to genetics,..."

That is, to say it mildly, baloney.

"..., said the brains of engineers have systemizing mechanisms that are set at a higher-than-average, or hypersystemizing, level. "Normal systemizing would be being able to read the instructions on your new appliance easily, reading maps or figuring out how your new digital camera works."

Since when do we read manuals or maps? :-)))

AGREED!

Only as a last resort ;-)

What's scary is my wife has begun assembling her new kitchen gadgets BEFORE reading the instructions :-(

...Jim Thompson

Hello Jim,

If your wife's ancestry doesn't contain much in terms of, ahem, engineering genes or memes or whatever then this also proves the statement "Parental influence doesn't stand a chance next to genetics,..." wrong. She must have picked it up from you.

Same here. My wife has no problems figuring out remotes or programmable devices. The manuals are always nicely filed away and never looked at much. The only engineer in her line was her father, her background is clinical work. When she tells me that something ain't working then it usually is indeed broken beyond repair.

So the moral of the story is, we engineers should choose... um, how do I say this politely... less intellectually talented females for wives?

;)

Well that would be hardly possible for those who replied, even blondes seem to manage better... When god created men, she was only rehearsing.

When my wife says that, it usually means that she's decided to buy a new one, so it's not worth arguing the matter. ;)))

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Or less geekey ones.

My wife is a speech pathologist (very verbal, not mathematical!) and she often works with autistic kids. She has more than once noted the prevalance of autistic kids whose parents are engineers, especially when they're both engineers.

Personally, I'd prefer to *not* mate with a female engineer.

John

Most manuals these days seems to be "don't dry your cat in the micro", "don't bath with your laptop" etc.. and all register, and product "info" sheets. That ofcourse are loose leaflets..

Hello John,

:-)))

Maybe because you live in the Bay Area? I mean, who is not an engineer down there? From the autistic kids I have met I can't recall any of their parents being engineers.

My first contact into marketing lead to marriage. Still going...

On what grounds do you make this decision?

Certainly parental influence can have a great influence on a person's moral character, but the research as quoted seems to strongly indicate that the actual brain function is strongly genetic.

I would imagine that they are ignoring other professions that require similar mental characteristics to engineering (like my brother in law the actuary, who spends his time making book for the insurance company). I also think that they are overemphasizing gender differences -- but probably not entirely.

I don't think that the sort of intelligence one needs to be a good engineer is the _only_ kind of intelligence there is.

Getting along with people, being able to talk to someone and know whether they are comfortable or un-, good aesthetic sense, instinctively knowing what sort of policies are going to appeal to a group of people

-- these are all more or less 'non-engineering' sorts of intelligence, but they can be found at pretty high levels.

My autistic grandson: father is a bean counter at Honeywell, mother (my daughter) is Chief Chemist, City of Phoenix Water Labs.

I met my wife in French class in High School... also still going... 46 years so far.

...Jim Thompson

Combien d'ann=E9es vous ont =E9tudi=E9 le fran=E7ais dans le lyc=E9e?

;)

For grins, I tried my first attempt (Combien d'ans avez-vous etudie francais au lycee) in the SIMULATOR

One year in class, two years writing letters in French to keep her nosy mother from understanding what we were saying to each other ;-)

I can't do much now but read road signs when I travel in France.

...Jim Thompson

Hello Tim,

It's not a decision. I just do not believe in some of the aggressive statements that people especially in the medical field make, often after studies with a rather thin patient population. Saying "...does not stand a chance next to genetics", quite frankly, is a bold statement and isn't going to cut it for me without a whole lot more proof. With proof I mean a few ten thousand cases. Just look at two excerpts from the link:

"Groundbreaking research in the controversial field of behavioral genetics..."

"The research into gray matter volume and its distribution has only just begun;..."

Pretty contradictory, those statements, aren't they?

I have worked with a whole lot of engineers over my career of about 20 years. I have also socialized with them quite a bit and with their families. The vast majority has ancestors that are as far away from engineering as it gets. Farmers, contractors, pastors, teachers, blue collar workers and so on. With myself it's a mixed bag. At least three were very technically inclined or engineers but others had very different professions. As for gender differences I don't believe much in that either. The woman engineers I worked with were every bit as good as their male counterparts. Oh, and my sister is an engineer as well.

Scarcely. The are lots of ways of being intelligent in lots of different fields. My wife is a psycholinguist, a professor and the author of a lot of heavily cited papers. Her opinions on the way our central heatings system should be run are firmly held and perfecly rational as far as they go, but wrong, because she doesn't understand the engineering involved and isn't in a postion to appreciate the depth of her ignorance.

One of the women that I didn't end up marrying is a professor of psychology in New York and a fellow of the Acoustical Society of American, while another is pro-vice-chancellor for research at some Australian University after an interesting career in sociology and economics.

The brain imaging people don't seem to have noted the way that using your brain can change the volume of specific regions in your head. London taxi drivers in training develop a larger hippocampus as they spend their two years learning every street in London - "the knowledge" that they have to be able to demonstrate before they can get a cab-drivers licene in London.

More theorising bollocks from the arts and crafts establishment in order to secure their research grants. They've managed to build a whole research industry based on no collective knowledge other than noticing that Autistic people can also be good at counting.

Looks like Baron Cohen and his mates, (residing on the arts side of our two-nations) and not familiar with these numbering things, have spent a couple of years thinking very wisely and deeply, before announcing that "Good at counting" must mean 'good at sums!'. Ergo, those engineering and maths types must be autistic!!. They then dream up a ludicrous 'level of systemising' to allow a person to move from being 'outgoing and well adjusted' (ie typical arts person) to 'introverted autistic'(ie engineer), in five easy moves. What a wheeze. They must have pissed themselves laughing as they picked up their new research grants. Sadly, they then lay bare their whole house of cards with ... "lot of engineers . . . will have to learn those skills" through management training". Only tendencies to autism I've ever come across, have been accountants and programmers. Good engineering staffs are invariably salt-of-the-earth types. Whatever is the world coming to?. john

"...isn't in a postion to appreciate the depth of her ignorance." I like that line. I like it a lot. ;)

Just curious, what *were* her ideas on the modifications to the central heating system?

Thanks,

Michael

Well, there's "when all else fails, read the instructions". And I do read maps, if I'm going someplace new. I used to ask for directions (especially if there was a woman in the car, and I was just exploring, but she assumed we were lost), but the problem with that is nobody has any clue where they are or how to get where you want to go - they just make stuff up or something. (Oh, go down thataway, and take a left where the Smith barn burned down in '86, ...") IOW, you can ask 12 different people for directions, and get 12 different answers, any one of which has about an 8% chance of getting you there. :-)

One time, I was just off I-105, and I _was_ lost - it was overcast, and I had got turned around so I couldn't tell North from South, and I asked some wetback, "Which way is the airport?" (I was east of the airport, I just wasn't sure which ramp went westbound), and the spic didn't understand the question until I translated it: "¿Donde esta aeropuerto?".

Geez, if it's that simple to translate into Mexican, then howcome they can't understand English? Are they all that brain-damaged, lazy, or just plain stubborn?

And I wonder why "Homeland Security" is wasting all of our tax dollars going after Americans, and invading any weaker country where they think "victory" is a slam-dunk, while the Mexican invasion proceeda apace.

Thanks, Rich