Archive for January, 2006

I remember watching a show on TLC a couple years back about the development of very young children (from birth to several years old, can’t remember the high age). They were specifically studying children at such a young age because they were interested in seeing if there were any mental or behavioral gender differences that wouldn’t have had a chance to be learned, thereby supporting the idea that they are genetic differences.

I’ve forgotten the vast majority of what the study concluded, but I do remember one example in particular. They found that there was a fairly large difference between the genders in how well they were able to multitask. In general, they found that young girls had an easier time dealing with multiple issues at once, while young boys tended to concentrate on a single issue and ignore other issues until the current one is complete.

ryeth and I spent some time talking about this after the show. And we found two really simple examples of where this was true between her and myself in our daily lives.

First. Feeding the animals. We have 2 dogs and a cat. They each have their own food bowl, and they all share the same water bowl. Invariably, whenever I would feed the animals, I would do one bowl of food at a time, and I would do the water bowl either before or after the food bowls. She, on the other hand, would normally put the water bowl in the sink, turn on the water, then fill the food bowls as the water bowl filled, then turn off the water and put the water bowl down. To her, it was natural and easy to just let the water run while she filled the food bowls. If it overflowed a little bit, no big deal. To me, I have a hard time turning away from the water bowl while it’s filling because I feel an urge to make sure it gets to precisely the level I want, no more and no less. I have to make a concerted effort to multitask this simple chore

Second. Talking on the phone. Especially when talking to family when we expect the phone call might be a long phone call. She will put on the headset and start doing chores around the house. I put on the headset and start pacing around the house, and the purpose of my pacing is specifically so I don’t allow myself to get distracted with things on the computer screen, or on TV, etc. So she generally falls into multitasking, whereas I make a concerted effort to single task the conversation.

Now, before anyone complains that they, or I, support the idea that the sexes aren’t equal, this isn’t about that kind of equality. One need only look at male and female genitalia to tell that they aren’t truly equal. They are different. The equality that we enforce in our country is equality of opportunity. No matter what any study may ever conclude about gender or gender differences, the one thing that will always be true is that people are different. Some are good at some things, some are good at others. And no matter how much someone might try to say one sex does one thing better than the other, they can never say so in anything other than a generality and there will always be exceptions to that rule. As such, it’s wrong for anyone to discriminate on the basis of gender (or race, or name your differentiating factor). Instead, you just need to find out for yourself if the person in question actually has the specific qualities you are looking for.

Secondly, I want to make clear that even if I believe there are differences in general or typical traits between men and women, what I don’t believe is that those differences make one or the other superior. They’re just different. I believe that an enlightened approach to the situation is to make the best use of a person’s abilities, regardless of their gender, and to give equal credit and status where such is due.

I think a perfect example of this is our current imbalance between the status given to top executives at large companies and their personal assistants.

In general, one of the traits that a top executive needs to be able to display is the ability to focus in on complex issues to an extreme degree when needed, and another is the ability to keep on top of everything that’s going on and not let anything fall through the cracks. To a certain extent, they commonly split this into two different roles and have the executive concentrate on the first ability while the assistant concentrates on the second for the executive. That falls in line with and explains why there would be a statistically larger number of male executives and female assistants, although neither role is exclusive to either sex. There are certainly other attributes that are important to both roles, but for now I want to concentrate on just these. However, even though the assistant may be the one that tracks things and makes sure that nothing falls through the cracks, prioritization is still left in the hands of the executive simply because the executive has the ultimate power of whether or not to accept the assistants guidance on what needs done when. This means that the executive role is typically considered superior, and also means that in order to be a good executive, you need to also be good at prioritizing, which is something that the study suggests women might be better at in general. It is the need for a combination of these two traits that makes a good executive hard to find, since one may come naturally to them while the other doesn’t. It’s also the relegation of the other part of the equation to subordinate that results in one role being considered superior to the other.

I would suggest that a possibly better way to handle this is to try a two headed approach. Let one person, the typical executive, be someone extremely good at focusing in on an issue and solving any problems. Let the other person be someone that’s extremely good at keeping everything in sight and juggling all the tasks that must be done. Then, make neither position superior to the other, make them equal. One is the problem solver, one is the scheduler. The study I mentioned might suggest that these two roles would show a statistical preference of male for the problem solver and female for the scheduler, however, as mentioned before, neither role would be exclusive. And as equal roles, there wouldn’t be any need to push one gender into a role that they aren’t suited for in an attempt to equal things out, they already would be equal. And since each person would be able to concentrate on having a single strong ability instead of a mix of two abilities, the overall number of people that would qualify as being good for their particular role would likely increase, and likely the best of each category would reach higher levels of competence.

One of the reasons that I suggest this is that I believe it to be true that the best executives out there are the ones that have the best assistants and actually allow the assistants to do that job of scheduling for them. A symbiotic relationship where each is allowed to excel. I find it disheartening that those excellent people doing that assistant job for the executive are not accorded their proper status and treatment for the function they perform. It is rare that you find an executive that can operate well without an excellent assistant right there with them. They should admit that fact and treat them appropriately. And that’s one of the reasons I chose the term scheduler in my description above. The term assistant carries an inferior connotation, whereas the term scheduler, at least in the computer world, carries the proper connotation for the function these people perform.

Generally speaking, most company executive roles probably don’t need to be hard real time (aka, the scheduler can force the problem solver to switch tasks if needed). That doesn’t negate the importance of the scheduler in any way, it’s still vital to have both a good scheduler and a good problem solver. But there is one job that I think would benefit greatly from a hard real time scheduler. Anyone who has watched the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 would agree with me that after the first plane flew into the World Trade Center in NY City, there should have been a hard real time scheduler kicking the president’s “deer in headlights” looking ass out of that kindergarten classroom and getting him on the important issue at hand immediately. I would suggest that this country might be better off in the long run if instead of voting for a President/Vice President pair, we voted for a Problem Solver/Scheduler Vice Problem Solver/Vice Scheduler sets.

Anyway, that’s just one of the things that I concluded after watching that episode on TLC. There are differences between genders, but I don’t think those differences are absolute, nor do I think they indicate status or superiority in any way, that instead they are prone to appear in the opposite gender on a fairly frequent basis and both are equally important in terms of the overall running of families, businesses, countries, etc. The people that are currently at the top of the ladder are those that can display both tendencies well, and just maybe we could make the top of the ladder a bit higher by splitting the roles in two and letting each be the best at what they do without needing to have a mix of competencies (or at least not such an equal mix of competencies).

So, I went to the local WoW/potluck/birthday party for Kamesh last night. Didn’t stay real late, but stayed about three hours. One of the primary reasons that I don’t go to parties real often is that I have a hard time making small talk. If there are fellow WoW gamers there, I can talk game. If there are fellow computer geeks there, I can talk computers. Occasionally I have opinions on other matters, but since I don’t really follow current events usually, and I don’t pay much attention to things like music or a lot of the other miscellaneous things that people talk about, I simply have a hard time chit chatting with people.

Last night was different though. One of the people there, idonealuv, has spent the last 12 years or so home schooling her children (something I would love to do with my children should I ever get the chance FWIW). As a result, she’s extremely well read on a wide variety of topics, including a lot of more advanced scientific topics. That just happens to be where my brain spends the majority of it’s non-work, non-WoW, non-TV time (and I don’t watch a lot of TV, in fact we currently don’t even *get* TV, we just rent DVDs from Blockbuster Online that are seasons of TV shows we like, such as Deep Space 9, Family Guy, stuff like that).

As a result, I probably spent a good half of my total time at the party talking about cellular biology, string theory, space/time theories, possibility of time travel, relativity, etc. For me, this type of conversation is far easier, and far more interesting than, small talk. I very much appreciated having that opportunity last night. So, *smooches* to idonealuv for that.

Now, one thing that she did mention last night, is that I really ought to write down some of the things that bounce around in my head from time to time. And that’s actually why I started this journal in the first place, I’ve just been extremely slow in doing anything about it. That’s probably as much because I know some of the ideas in my head are just half baked at this point in time as anything else. But, to be honest, I’ve probably forgotten several of the more important ideas that I’ve had in the past because I didn’t write them down. So, I’m gonna try to do a bit better on this from now on

The reason female dogs are known as bitches:

Delilah comes up to my bed, whining like she wants out. I, all sleepy eyed and drowsy after having gone to bed way too late, get up and walk to the door. I open the door. I turn around to usher her out the door quickly since it’s chilly outside. She’s laying in my recently vacated warm spot in my bed. Bitch. She’s just too smart, and too sneaky for her own good.