The more inventions & discoveries mankind makes, the more redundant 'man' becomes

Pictures Of Lilly

Does anyone else view my exaggerated statement as a possible trend? Or am I nutters?

Is it that women are better 'do'ers than men... that they're less inclined to get bored, and that they're better multi-taskers? And that men are better at attention to detail on one thing? So at this stage, if most new inventions are only going to prove counter-productive to society, and if cancer's never gonna be cured, then what do we need men for?

It's just I hear a lot of women complaining on the radio, about how there are presently more females graduating than males, and yet there aren't that many women in the high earning jobs. Do these women not realise that the men who are in these high earning jobs, are effectively men from the past!? Wait twenty years and we'll see how things are looking at the top!

The thrill is in the chase for men, but first world society has chased it's dream to completion, and now it's like we're all in some big spa, complaining out about trivial matters.

Wibbs

Pictures Of Lilly wrote: »

Does anyone else view my exaggerated statement as a possible trend? Or am I nutters?

Yeah P. You're nutters. I dunno there may be something to it. Though it will affect all, not by gender. This has been historically the case too. EG when mechanised spinning machines and looms came in it pretty much killed off the hand spinners and weavers who tended to be women. Now they could retrain as operators of such machines and many did, though the skills died off.

The problem which is likely coming down the line is a level of automation that will make previous innovations look like flint hand tools. What has generally happened in the past is that machinery replaced/augmented muscle. What's coming is machinery replacing brains. Again this won't be particularly gender specific. It might throw up some odd unexpected and counterintuitive outcomes in some areas. EG a doctor is easier to replace by an app than a nurse. "Doctor" diagnostic programs have been shown to be more accurate in diagnosis than the human version. Even today, you could probably stuff all of medical knowledge onto the average iPhone. Any area where information processing memory and conclusions based on that info is under threat.

The usual response is that new jobs will be created to take up the slack. I'm really not so sure. In the past when muscle was replaced retraining was a much easier prospect. With ever more specialisation in many fields, specialisation that can require years of university and on the job experience, switching tack to something new will not be so easy. Even if we augment ourselves it's still cheaper to run a bot that can do the same thing, maybe with a couple of real humans with oversight.

Is it that women are better 'do'ers than men... that they're less inclined to get bored, and that they're better multi-taskers? And that men are better at attention to detail on one thing?

Much of that has been debunked. Especially the multi tasking thing. There are far more variables between people than gender. There seem to be some gender differences at the extreme end. So among high end maths stuff, you find more men for example. In languages more women. But the average seems to be an even split. Though women appear to be more conscientious , more passive and complain less often. This has been put forward as one reason why in contract negotiations women tend not to fight harder for more money. They do appear to be generally the "better" employees. And if the wage gap is to be believed(and I don't), it's a wonder why companies employ men at all. Better workers at 20% off? seems like a no brainer...

The problem with much of this is that there does seem to more male outliers on the curve. There are more men who are sub par in intelligence and diligence, but there are also more men at the very top in intelligence. women tend more to the 'average", though in my humble and experience the "average" women is more intelligent and more diligent and practical than the "average" man. Though if it's in one specific direction I have found more men to be obsessive to the point of mania. "Good" in certain pursuits.

So at this stage, if most new inventions are only going to prove counter-productive to society, and if cancer's never gonna be cured, then what do we need men for?

TBH I dunno how one begets the other. For a start I believe cancer will be "cured". As it is the rates of remission, cure and living with rather than dying from various cancers are far higher than even a decade ago. That will improve decade upon decade. There are therapies today in labs around the world that will save lives tomorrow.

On that point, what the history of advancement and knowledge has shown us is that pretty much everything you think you know today is already out of date, or plain wrong. On another unrelated thread in another forum hereabouts I remembered a discussion between the philosopher Wittgenstein and one of his students. The student reckoned that those in the past who believed the Sun orbited the Earth were clearly stupid. To which Wittgenstein responded with "if you believed the Sun had orbited the Earth would a sunset or sunrise look any different?". And of course it wouldn't. Indeed because that was a cultural "given", the science of the time backed it to the hilt. And even in the face of oddities like the retrograde motions of some planets they had very complex explanations and mathematics to explain that away, even when the much simpler explanation of a heliocentric universe got rid of this oddities. After all Aristotle had said the Earth was at the centre of things and who are we to suggest otherwise. This is fcuking Aristotle we're talking about here guys.

Every generation/culture has their givens. For one it might be Aristotle, for the next it might be Newton and for the next it might be Einstein. All givens were defended even in the face of observable WTF's? Only the temporary safety of absolutes and consensus and hubris shooed those concerns away. And so it will be with Einstein too. Consider the "Big Bang Theory", that is a relatively "new" given. Even the title was originally a pisstake by those mainstream scientists that believed in a steady state universe(who in turn had their own very fancy scientific explanations for that given). Plate tectonics another recent one. IIRC close enough to the 1950's before that was accepted and today it's most certainly a given. Again the original suggester of the theory was mostly dismissed, even laughed at.

It's just I hear a lot of women complaining on the radio, about how there are presently more females graduating than males, and yet there aren't that many women in the high earning jobs. Do these women not realise that the men who are in these high earning jobs, are effectively men from the past!? Wait twenty years and we'll see how things are looking at the top!

Or more simply a) women are less likely to aggressively push for such top positions and b) may actually have more bloody sense by not doing so. The top percentage of those jobs in any field are essentially peopled by obsessive workaholics. Pretty much every single self made millionaire/billionaire you care to mention is one such workaholic. And it's rarely about the money itself either. More about their particular obsession and/or keeping score with other equally workaholic obsessives. You can even see this when they spend their money on stuff. They'll fight over each other to spend 60 million Euroquids on a rare Ferrari, that they'll probably never even drive. If they can spare the time to drive it. When one lives in a democracy of common things that was forged in the industrial revolution the rare becomes the truly authentic thing. Hell, this is even evident among the proles like ourselves. Only last week I did my annual socks and jocks purchases(I'm a bloke. Feck off) in the local Dunnes/Penneys and on the jocks made in the millions by some child worker in Pakistan emblazoned in the waist line was "Authentic Apparel". How the fcuk is that "authentic". Authentic what? Jayzuz. but we all buy into that.

Anyway, I digressed. As I am wont to do... :D But yeah consider a woman, a woman who has worked like a slave through school, university and into the corporate or professional world and who hits say thirty heading for the top of her respective field. She could go on and go on, but she goes hang on to fcuk, maybe there's more. I want a family and time's a ticking. So she takes a few years off to have the family, goes back into her field at a lower rate than her male colleagues that kept going ever upwards, but she has plenty of money, a stable home life and family. Who's the daft one there? Never mind that men have on advantage in keeping fertile for much longer, so can afford to keep the nose to the grindstone.

The thrill is in the chase for men, but first world society has chased it's dream to completion, and now it's like we're all in some big spa, complaining out about trivial matters.

Well, maybe. There may well be much to that alright. Because "we've never had it so good" on average, hell even the below average, it could be argued - and I would - that our soul's immune system is undertaxed and like many brought up in near sterile environments who suffer physical allergies, our souls brought up in in equally "sterile" times can also give rise to allergies of the psyche and that's one reason why we see such an increase in anxiety and depression, when it would seem logical that these conditions should be decreasing in the face of all this never had it so good*.

Christ. I went a bit OTT and off piste there PoL. Stream of (semi) consciousness there. In my defence, I did have the rare enough opportunity to get into a bottle of decent Merlot. Well half a bottle. But enough. So I beg your indulgence and pardons. Consider yourself damned lucky I've not smoked the wacky baccy in years. Though if you suffer from insomnia and have read through this BS? You can thank me later...


*other pressures are more subtle. We live lives of increasing complexity and soul load. And these may be small, even insignificant in isolation, but there are many many more of them than our great grandparents, hell, even our parents had to bear.

Permabear

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silverharp

Permabear wrote: »

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only a small number of men relatively speaking will be innovators but generally whatever new tech or trends will be led by men. On the bright side , people are having less kids so there ought to be some kind of on going talent shortage in the future. Secondly on the more manual side , so much infrastructure/housing has been built in the last 50 years that there will be a lot of maintaining which cant be automated.

Permabear

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Wibbs

silverharp wrote: »

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Only in the west are people having fewer kids. Ireland being an outlier in that one within Europe, which is mostly stagnant or in negative growth. In the developing world the population is still growing. Which I see as a big problem. Looming and current. The fewer people the better IMHO and in the future I'll be that the countries with the lower population densities will be the better off. Particularly if the rise of automation etc is faster and more pervasive than currently imagined.

Permabear wrote: »

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I'd be in board agreement there. Men tend from very early on in life to be tinkerers, in possession of mindsets that want to take stuff apart(putting stuff back together comes later ). Not saying that some women aren't but the percentage seems to be much lower. And personally I don't think it's culture. Culture may encourage it, but I would see it as more innate. There tends also to be a more rebellious streak in men. They're generally also less socially aware or interested. As I said above I have found personally that the average woman is a smarter cookie than the average man. They also retain more plastic thinking as they age. A lot of men hit a certain age that could be anywhere from mid 20's to mid 30's where they have built a belief and action template and they stick pretty rigidly to this. Whereas I've found, again as a general thing, women in their 50's, 60's and beyond to be much more open to new thinking. Now if you're looking for the way beyond average, the dreamers and top end thinkers there are more men in that bracket(there are correspondingly more complete morons too). I find women in general to be more conscientious in work, more likely to stay the course and better at marshalling groups.

silverharp

Permabear wrote: »

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another place it popped up is Youtube 90% (or so Ive heard) of the content creators are men and at least until the ad-pocolypse Pewdiepie was making over $10m a year from his basement. Meanwhile I bet college courses like journalism and media are majority female and churning out graduates who expect high paying jobs in newspapers or cable TV just the point when they will be the biggest shedder of jobs and will be slashing pay and conditions.

Permabear

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silverharp

Permabear wrote: »

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An interesting way of looking at it however if boys are stressed having to fall in with girl's standards, might the girls be stressed having a system that boys enjoy? Also kids spend far more time out of school than in school so I think the role of schools in moulding the yoof is a bit overstated?

Wibbs

silverharp wrote: »

An interesting way of looking at it however if boys are stressed having to fall in with girl's standards, might the girls be stressed having a system that boys enjoy?

That's a valid point. No point in helping one gender, while restricting another. It would replace one biased system with another. Maybe, and this is controversial, maybe we need to revaluate some gender separation in schooling?

Also kids spend far more time out of school than in school so I think the role of schools in moulding the yoof is a bit overstated?

I dunno S, I would definitely see it as a very strong influence. I was schooled in a boys only environment and I remember retaking my leaving cert in a mixed gender environment and a few of us noted that there were some differences between guys who had gone to single sex and guys that hadn't. The former seemed more rebellious for the want of a better word, more likely to be the troublemakers, the mixed guys more placid, again for the real want of a better word. A few teachers I mentioned this to broadly agreed with that.

silverharp

Wibbs wrote: »

That's a valid point. No point in helping one gender, while restricting another. It would replace one biased system with another. Maybe, and this is controversial, maybe we need to revaluate some gender separation in schooling? .

its a difficult one , I think being taught separately might help on the atmosphere in a class, but the second is there would need to be a separate curriculum especially in junior school. We all know boys are more likely to prefer specialisation and flexibility , so if a 10 year old adores cars or space or military, would that kid be indulged and encouraged to devour that material?
The ideal then maybe that they go to mixed classes in the final couple of years when boys catch up with girls developmentally.
Cant see any of that happening outside of a few private schools, but shows how potentially how unhappy a lot of boys maybe in school because of the cookie cutter nature of it

Wibbs wrote: »

I dunno S, I would definitely see it as a very strong influence. I was schooled in a boys only environment and I remember retaking my leaving cert in a mixed gender environment and a few of us noted that there were some differences between guys who had gone to single sex and guys that hadn't. The former seemed more rebellious for the want of a better word, more likely to be the troublemakers, the mixed guys more placid, again for the real want of a better word. A few teachers I mentioned this to broadly agreed with that.

for sure single sex versus mixed schools seem to have an effect on behaviour. In my suggestion above I'd suggest schools be mixed but the classes not. However everyone is being taught the same curriculum so a boy's day in a boys school isn't that different to a girl's day in a girls school, its sitting quiet in class churning out neat homework will endear one to the teachers.

Permabear

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Permabear

Permabear wrote: »

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In my own experience from teaching, I found that boys responded better once they could see the practical application of the subject they were learning. If they couldn't understand how it benefited them then they were more likely to drift, and not really improve very well. Girls, on the other hand, didn't need that focus.. they tended to just accept that everything was necessary since the teacher told them that it was needed.

[Admittedly my experience of teaching is all from China & M.East which is very role and authority driven.)