'What a piece of work is a man.' William Shakespeare

http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm


Peace,

kowalski

some interesting points, but very large and not referenced

It's still got some pretty good stuff in though

Do you really need references to know that more men are in prison and mental institutions than women. That more men are in the top jobs than women, and mostly men do all the dangerous jobs etc. That more men excel at innovating. His example of how poor black Americans completely changed music forever by creating rock and roll and jaz is awesome and again doesn't really need referencing.

I understand the requirement for referencing your intellectual output, however, nearly all the things he writes about are commonly known truths.


Peace,

kowalski

It was an invited address, so thats probably why it isn't referenced. But then again, he would stuggle to get it published anywhere decent without references. For good reason.

Good practice to reference, it enables readers to have a bit more faith in the article. I have a hard time believing things that aren't referenced. Especially following someones arguments based on 'facts' that aren't referenced.

Either using no references (or false ones) is something people who distort knowledge do. BNP et al.

Some of the facts that I'd like to see a reference for:

maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.

One study counted that over 80% of the people who work 50-hour weeks are men.

hardly any women improvise.

Workaholics are mostly men [ has pregancy etc been controlled for?...]

Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.

That’s why human women evolved first. [eh?!...]

Thanks to grade inflation, most students now get A’s and B’s, but a few range all the way down to F. With that kind of low ceiling, the high-achieving males cannot pull up the male average, but the loser males will pull it down.
[more variation in male performance - interesting but I'd like to see a reference!! ]

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Some more positive input on this post...

His essays are here:

Denis Dutton - articles and essays

most peer-reviewed papers can be found here:

Google Scholar

(and the abstracts summarise the papers if you can't read them e.g. PsycNET )

a fantastic BBC podcast on numbers, critical thinking

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