Some of you will know that I sat and seethed through parts of Allan Pease’s presentation last year, especially the bits where he more or less said that women’s brains aren’t set up to do engineering, unless they are lesbian (I summarise).
Although he is a consummate showman, and gave his audience what they wanted to hear, he was way off on his depiction of the different brains of men and women, and misrepresented the science.
Cordelia Fine is one of my hero/heroines and wrote the book “A mind of its own, how our brain distorts and deceives”, in which she looked at how the brain tricks us, and why we are prone to bias and prejudice.
She is currently writing a book on “Neurosexism” (such as that practiced by Allan Pease) where neuroscience study results are twisted and taken out of context to support the biases of the speaker.
She’s speaking tomorrow as part of the University of Canterbury outreach program. The web-link is http://www.outreach.canterbury.ac.nz/neurosexism.shtml. It's a free session.
I’m going – and hope you will too, if you're in Christchurhc.
Whatever the case, remember:
Girls can do maths! And be engineers! And wear fabulous shoes! All at the same time! *
* except when wearing steel-capped boots.
Showing posts with label cordelia fine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cordelia fine. Show all posts
11 March 2008
Magic Bullets 2 : Operating Systems
I spoke this morning at the Christchurch SWAP group (it went well - and being around so many enthusiastic people is a great way to start the day.) Afterwards, Tony Watson (of All Business Matters) and I were talking about ideas and implementation.
The thing is, that we all know more than we can possibly use. As Jim Vuocolo pointed out getting more information, going on courses, seeking a Magic Bullet Moment can be a dilution of focus and, when all's said and done, your time can be better spent elsewhere.
Tony and I came up with a metaphor : sometimes life is like a computer. If you load extra programmes, cool widgets, and stuff, you just slow things down. Sometimes it's more important to use what you have.
That said, there is one book I'm encouraging people to read. It's by Cordelia Fine , a psychologist who is also a witty and entertaining writer. The title: "A mind of its own, how our brain distorts and deceives" gives a hint of its context, and you won't trust your perceptions quite so much afterwards!
.
The thing is, that we all know more than we can possibly use. As Jim Vuocolo pointed out getting more information, going on courses, seeking a Magic Bullet Moment can be a dilution of focus and, when all's said and done, your time can be better spent elsewhere.
Tony and I came up with a metaphor : sometimes life is like a computer. If you load extra programmes, cool widgets, and stuff, you just slow things down. Sometimes it's more important to use what you have.
That said, there is one book I'm encouraging people to read. It's by Cordelia Fine , a psychologist who is also a witty and entertaining writer. The title: "A mind of its own, how our brain distorts and deceives" gives a hint of its context, and you won't trust your perceptions quite so much afterwards!
.
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