More thoughts on Susan Pinker

I've read nearly 200 pages of Pinker now. I'm procrastinating from other things.

She makes a very obvious case that men and women frequently want different things in the professional realm, particularly in regard to work-family balance. That is something that virtually everyone agrees is true, and most also agree that professions should accommodate that fact so that women can pursue a wider range of professions.

What is less obvious is the extent to which this is a preference wired in the brain versus a response to facts of life. Pinker clearly sees it as wired in the brain, but a perfectly plausible alternative is that women are simply responding to certain realities that are rooted in experience and the practicalities of having children. 

To wit, two people might start off wanting the same things, but then go on to face different circumstances and have their goals and desires diverge. If, tomorrow, my life changed completely (and we needn't make this some magical scenario where a genie changes my biology, I could simply lose my job or get a different job or get sick or my wife dies or my wife gets an amazing new job or a close family member moves nearby or whatever else, good or bad or in-between) I might well start wanting different things in life. None of this would have anything to do with changes to my brain or past experience or socialization or whatever else, just a change to my present circumstances. Likewise, women might well (and indeed seem to, based on all available evidence, I hasten to add) have brains wired like male brains, but have different goals because of experiences and facts of life.

Pinker makes a case for difference, but she doesn't make a case for difference rooted in the original brain programming. (Nor did her brother succeed in making that case in his book, I hasten to add.)

Not all differences are nature or nurture, at least in the sense of things shaped by genes and early environment. Some differences are present. Take two twins. Raise them the same way. They won't be exactly the same, but they'll generally be quite similar. Then put them in different situations and of course they'll take different paths, even with the same nature and nurture.

Now, in some sense differences due to new circumstances are still environmental, and hence nurture, but they're not baked-in nurture. And anything involving reproduction is ultimately nature, but societies shape the circumstances under which that very natural function is carried out. A society with flexible jobs and subsidized childcare will be one where people are "nurtured" to perform a "nature" function differently than one with less flexibility and less support for childcare.

On a different note, Chapter 7 is probably the chapter most consistent with more acceptable, consensus notions in the present. In Chapter 7 she makes much of Impostor Syndrome. She sees it as biological, which obviously gives short shrift to culture and society. But even worse, there's now reason to believe that Impostor Syndrome is as common among men as among women; men just talk about it less because (in keeping with the nature of Impostor Syndrome) they're even more insecure about it! I don't fault Pinker over her assumption that Impostor Syndrome is more common among women; she wrote in 2008 and a lot has changed in the social science landscape since then. (I do fault her assumption that it's biological, but that's the fundamental nature of the book, not a matter specific to her discussion of Impostor Syndrome.)

I'm also not convinced that Impostor Syndrome actually limits people. This is not a quibble with Pinker specifically, but with all discourse around it. Given the number of highly successful people who have it, we can't really rely on it as an explanation of any failures or shortcomings. Yes, some people might well say that Impostor Syndrome is why, at some point, they turned down an opportunity to go farther. On the other hand, people weigh opportunities every day, and sometimes they look at one and say "Nope, not this one, I'll try something else." Sometimes they say they're choosing something else because they think they're not good enough, sometimes because they think it's a dubious opportunity, sometimes because they see something better. 

If we're humble about our self-knowledge, we should be a little careful before assuming it was actually Impostor Syndrome, or at least that Impostor Syndrome led them to make a decision that they shouldn't have made. What if a person decided not to take an opportunity because they feel they need to spend a little more time in their current situation, consolidating and preparing for the next step? Or that spending more time in their current situation might offer some benefits to better prepare them to make good on the next step down the line? That might actually be a good call, even if "Oh, I'm not ready, I'll fail" is a rather pessimistic way of framing the decision.

The Sexual Paradox by Susan Pinker

Susan Pinker is a psychologist and the sister of Steven Pinker, who wrote The Blank Slate. She also wrote her own controversial book alleging biological differences between groups: The Sexual Paradox. She cites abundant research purporting to show sex differences in a wide variety of contexts, but she frames her book around the captivating hook of two distinct subsets of men and women: Men who went on to successful careers after exhibiting various learning disabilities and other neurological challenges as children. This makes for fascinating individual tales, but it also limits the lessons that we can draw from the focus of her book. Even if we set aside the anecdotes and just focus on, say, statistical comparisons between men and women with dyslexia (or whatever other condition), we're comparing outliers from two groups, rather than averages or medians. This limits the relevance to the wider populations of men and women.

Also, her anecdotes are subject to interpretation, and her interpretations depend on which details one emphasizes. To wit, consider some of the women profiled in Chapter 3, which focuses on women who left STEM careers:

1) She considers a computer science professor pseudonymed "Donna." Donna spent sixteen years in the field but then said she was bored. OK, so it was lack of interest that drove her away? Well, Pinker later mentions that Donna got burdened with a disproportionate amount of mentoring and committee responsibilities, a common experience for women faculty, especially in STEM. Can I say with certainty that Donna left more because of a disproportionate burden rather than disinterest in the field? Of course not. But without more extensive quotations from Donna I can't be confident that Pinker accurately summarized Donna's motives.

2) A geography PhD pseudonymed Sonia. Sonia started a professorship but apparently didn't enjoy the demands of teaching and research. OK, fair enough, though I will note that it's not clear that she lacked enthusiasm for the subject; it seems that the workload was hard to balance, a common concern. Preferences regarding the pace of work are very different from preferences regarding the type of work.

So she took an administrative role in an office preparing grants and reports. But her boss was a jerk. Pinker says he was a jerk to everyone, so it wasn't sexism; we lack the evidence to adjudicate that interpretation. She thus changed careers to elementary education.

It's hard to read this narrative as indicating some innate preference for people-oriented work, given that it was a third choice and other factors beyond the type of work played into each transition. Maybe this individual woman really did prefer people-oriented work over data on land use or whatever. Maybe she liked both. Maybe she actually would have been happier doing geography in a different context. We don't know.

3) She also cites an anonymous law professor who got a BS in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, then went to an MD/PhD program, and finally left (with the MD but apparently not the PhD) to go to law school. She is now a law professor, and claims to be happier. She says she was not discouraged in any way while she was in science, and in fact felt pressure to stay rather than pressure to leave.

Maybe so. I'll just note that people who get a BS from Yale, an MD from Harvard, and a law degree from presumably a top-tier law school (she's an Ivy law professor, and they rarely hire from outside the top tier) are unusual in many ways, and move in unusual environments. Not only would I not extrapolate from her to a wider swath of women, I also would not extrapolate from her universities to all of academic science.

Besides women, she also discusses Terence Tao, a top mathematician who was a prodigy from an early age, but was nowhere near extraordinary in language skills. Again, I wouldn't extrapolate from such a singular person to men at large. She likewise made references to Einstein earlier, and the contrast between his mathematical and language skills. She doesn't explicitly endorse the theory that he was dyslexic, but she is clearly willing to entertain it. Besides the fact that Einstein was, um, unusual, the man read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in his teens; that is not an easy read (to put it mildly).

When she cites larger studies she has a point, but her case studies are not as illustrative as one might hope.